


Unravel

by ShiryaW



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Slow Burn, so business as usual in Wentworth, suffering terror and angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:59:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiryaW/pseuds/ShiryaW
Summary: As Governor Ferguson plays a dangerous game of torture and subterfuge with the lives of Wentworth's inhabitants, particularly one Franky Doyle, it is up to Bridget Westfall, the prison's new psychologist, to unravel her true nature - and in the process, discover something else in her own heart. Diverges from canon around 3x03 and goes from there.





	1. Splinter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScarletteStar1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarletteStar1/gifts).



> English isn't my first language so please keep that in mind in case you see any funny business going on in here (and consider letting me know so that I may fix it). Otherwise, welcome to Fridget hell and enjoy your stay. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

> The changes inside were enough to paralyze  
>  I doubt I’ll survive in this hellish paradise  
>  So if you miss me, look through your memory

~ Unravel (English cover) by AmaLee

* * *

 

In a game of chess, victory is passed down to the patient. Nothing is more tempting than seizing the reins and jousting directly with the black king just to see the blow of death reflected in his eyes when his guard has fallen and his kingdom crumbled to ashes. But as satisfying as aggression is, it is no way to win. One must think, think, think ahead, what to do, what to do. First the king must be stripped of his pawns. All it takes is one small step of one small page to the other side to turn the tide of battle.

Joan sat motionless at her pristine, barren desk whose earthen pattern was interrupted only briefly by the neutral hues of a chessboard. She gave her opponent no clues; no quivering of her brow, no subtle wrinkles of concentration around her eyes. In fact, hadn’t in been for the barely audible, rhythmic huff of her breathing, one might have mistaken her for a wax figurine. What to do, what to do. The goldfish swam in infinite circles in its bowl, never realizing – to its benefit – that its lukewarm world was just a fraction of someone’s imagination.

Finally, Joan deftly picked up her remaining bishop and stationed him in front of a black knight. Indeed, she refused to attack the king with a check. There was so much work to do before she would be ready. First, the rooks must be destabilized and the king and queen separated. It must start with a simple, inconspicuous splinter in the hand, barely noticeable and almost forgettable. That is where the infection will spread.

Her father looked her in the eye and saw nothing, just as he had taught her. He retaliated by moving one of his pawns a step forward.

The next day, Franky Doyle’s drug supply route was cut. Cindy Lou wouldn’t give it a rest. The girls want their gear. Cindy fucking Lou. Franky threw another punch at the center of the punching bag, allowing herself a split second of reverie when her reddened knuckles hit the fabric, a flash of a daydream in which Cindy Lou could go fuck herself. _You have one hour._ The girl let out a groan of frustration – because that’s what she was then, a girl without a plan in the place where shit hits the fan, and every second resonated like the steady beat of a church gong in her ears, and she really hadn’t thrown enough oil at Mike’s smug, thousand‑dollar face back then. That was it. That was her only solution. A flood of brimstone and hellfire searing her skin and swallowing her whole into oblivion was, ironically, the only mental image that brought her a semblance of solace before she opened her eyes and reaffirmed that there was a long and rocky road lying between her and the gates of hell itself.

_Fuck!_

As she scanned the environment around her for something she couldn’t name, her gaze fell upon the barbed wire atop a 5-meter wall. It would take her ten to fifteen seconds to scale it and reach the problematic part. If she ripped her tank top and wrapped the pieces around her hands, she might be able to maintain a steady hold on the wire long enough to get herself through. Her hair – the hair would have to go, best wrapped in a tight bun with all the strands that can’t fit in ripped out. If she was careful enough to not let the razors cut through any vital muscles or tendons, she could make it across with some precautions. A mouth gag. No doubt, she had to put something in her mouth to bite down on when the pain hits. And through all that, if the heavens themselves declared her feeble attempt at a struggle to be entertaining enough, maybe – just maybe – she could make it to the other side.

Franky bit down on her lower lip, hard. The other side of the wall, with its seaside cafés and cats chasing mice and wind unbroken by thick slabs of concrete all around. She could breathe the same air that nestled in Liz’s lungs when she got her chance. And then what? The trail of blood, thick crimson drops like blotches of ink on wintry earth, would lead her pursuers straight to their goal. The nearest body of water? It was a lake two kilometers away, a dozen times farther than she could ever hope to get.

Boomer told her to fuck off, Bea might have as well, Juice fucked her over and the cold hard truth of the matter was that Franky had nowhere else to turn. Nowhere else to run except inward, into the belly of the beast.

So she did just that. She made her way resolutely to the library only to be interrupted by Wentworth’s latest rescue – Wesley or Westwald or whatever her name was – who was apparently looking for a fist to the face, asking Franky to agree to a session like that. Franky didn’t exactly have time to make a snide remark about how the place had a W fetish. Not with Cindy Lou and her crew circling around her and the new meat like a wake of starved vultures thirsting to gobble up her disemboweled carcass. Everywhere she looked she found them watching, and when she didn’t, she was met with the calf’s piercing blue eyes pleading with her for an explanation she was in no state or mood to give.

Luckily, disorder came naturally to her. She had lived and breathed chaos and witnessed seeds of discord planted every day since she stopped being Miss Doyle and became Inmate Doyle. Usually, she hid behind a pretense of fake self-imposed normality, but not now. Not today. Today, she decided to become the whirlwind she had become so intimately acquainted with. She stepped into the library and flipped over a desk here, a chair there, maintaining direct eye contact with Cindy Lou’s henchmen. It was the most pompous show of defiance she could afford what with the new psychologist – right, Westfall, whatever – coaxing her like she was a spooked horse, like this woman understood a single part of what was going on around her. Like she understood that Franky was, for all intents and purposes, fucked.

“Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, Franky?” Bridget said calmly, unfazed by copies of _Physiology of Behavior_ and _Blackstone’s Statutes on Commercial and Consumer Law_ flying through the thick air.

Well, if she was to be handled like a horse, then she would kick. “You’re all talk,” she sneered as she sent another stack of papers ricocheting off the shelves. “I’m for action.”

The incredulous bystanders around her scattered in all directions. Some watched with their heads cocked in confusion; some debated the longevity of this theatrical act in hushed whispers. Some used it as an opportunity to pass whatever it was they had been looking to pass: pills, cigarettes, evidence of some transgression or other. Franky opened a copy of _Gulliver’s Travels_ and tore out a set of pages from the book’s midsection, ripped them to shreds and imagined they were letters from her father. The pieces floated uncharacteristically gently towards the ground, enclosing her in a human‑sized snowball that had just been cracked.

“Doyle, step away from the shelves!” a familiar voice resonated through the room.

“About time,” Franky muttered under her breath as Officer Jackson grabbed her arm and dragged her towards the door to spend some quality alone time (most importantly alone time) in the slot. The vultures at the door couldn’t touch her now. No, they would have to starve a little longer while there was still warm blood racing through her veins. As she was led outside she locked eyes with the blonde that unwittingly gave her a single ticket to safety. Now that her mind was overcome with the rush of victory, she almost wanted to tell her, _nothing personal_. Almost, before the realization hit her again that she was merely delaying the inevitable. Instead she swallowed the words as they formed in her throat and traded them for one more day of life.

It was pitiful, the way Bridget tried. She stood there on the other side of the door with Jackson and Ferguson when Franky was slotted. Franky didn’t particularly care what the new meat had to say, but her words reached Franky even as the young victor settled by the small lone window of her cell digging notches in the wall with her fingernails.

_Can I speak with her?_

_No._

_I want to understand where that aggression’s coming from._

Good luck with that, Franky thought. She still wasn’t getting it, any of it. Not that Franky could blame her. High standards are for inmates. Those are the people who only get one chance. Outsiders? They haven’t been sucked in. They don’t know the price of mercy.

_She is beyond help._

_I disagree. I think there’s something else going on._

Wait a second.

Franky’s finger stopped in its tracks as it pressed against the glass. Somebody had played tic-tac-toe here with herself – and lost. Cruel irony. Out of the blue something unthinkable, something that should never have happened, happened. Franky had to see it. She suddenly had to see how the universe could break its own rules like this. She turned her head towards the door and saw, through the glass and a veil of separation, Bridget Westfall’s lips curving into a cautious but encouraging smile. Now, Franky had had many women smile at her. They smiled when her hand was between their thighs; they smiled when they were taking her body; they smiled when they were taking her money; they smiled when they were taking her freedom; they all smiled when they were lying to her, but they never smiled like this.

She smiled back.

* * *

 

Night fell too quickly for Franky to manage to exercise herself into exhaustion. Besides, the prospect of an imminent bashing and possibly violent death didn’t do much to calm her nerves. She had thought she’d won, but all she had really done was let them torture her more. She lay in bed simmering quietly in her own anger and banged the back of her head against the wall softly like a countdown, one, two, three, the snap of a bone, four, five, six, a wound in the flesh. The memory of Jacs Holt running a shiv across her chest overwhelmed her senses and Franky squeezed her eyes shut to chase it away. It was a childish strategy – how could you possibly prevent yourself from seeing an image that doesn’t exist? – but at least in here Franky could allow herself a moment of puerility. When she opened her eyes again, she glimpsed a dark, ominous shadow hovering in the corridor outside her door, rigid and still as if it were etched into the wall, filling the delve with a deeper shade of indigo.

Franky propped herself up on her elbows and narrowed her eyes at the ghostly figure before a shiver ran down her spine, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. There was no ghost, no spectral guardian from the great beyond here to graciously take her away before her time. What she saw was nothing but the pitch-black irises of Joan Ferguson peering at her, and suddenly Franky realized that there was no road to hell paved in front of her. She was already there.


	2. Sliver

Joan Ferguson was like the Mona Lisa in the most unflattering sense. No, she wasn’t a sight to behold, a catalyst for midnight epiphanies, or the muse of an awe‑struck artist. Joan Ferguson had Mona Lisa’s eyes. They followed you from all angles and all directions when you least expected them. They were hollow and infinite and reflected far too much of your own reality for comfort, to a point where gazing into them felt like being trapped in a room full of mirrors. Joan Ferguson’s eyes showed the same image countless times over for no other reason than the fact she wanted them to.

These same eyes were staring Franky Doyle down in the middle of the night making her already small cell feel that much smaller. Only one side of Ferguson’s mouth was curled upward into a subtle but clear hint of a satisfied smirk. Franky gulped down a lump in her throat as she rose from her bed and made her way over to the cell door. “Can I help you?” she said with a raised eyebrow.

There was no response.

“Hey! You in there? What’s this about?” Franky tried again and knocked on the glass pane between them.

She received not a single exhale in return. The figure at her door said nothing, moved nothing, and looked as if she breathed nothing. All she did was pierce Franky with her gaze ceaselessly like a water mill, the ooze of her spreading into the girl’s core where none were invited, crawling, infecting. Judging. “Hello? You gone deaf or somethin’?” Franky offered one more time in hope the sound of her voice would wake her from what was clearly a bad dream. One more time, Ferguson didn’t answer. Franky listened intently for anything, any form of acknowledgement in the silence. She blinked rapidly several times just to make sure her eyes weren’t playing an underhanded trick on her. They weren’t. “Hey, if you got nothin’ to say to me, I’m going back to bed,” she said, spreading her arms in resignation, and threw herself back down on her hard mattress stomach first.

Still she recognized the blade of a penetrating stare burrowing into the valley between her shoulders. It felt like a centipede biting off flakes of skin and later flesh, gnawing its way deeper and deeper down to her spine for some rotten bait in excruciating, microscopic steps. Tossing and turning, Franky scratched at her arms and shoulders, stealing stray glances towards the cell door. Every time she did, every time without fail, she was faced with a single strip of moonlight illuminating the face in the shadows. The word that came to mind was _purgatory_. Franky thought she might be stuck in a twisted purgatory of souls where time was a foreign concept.

There was no telling when she had fallen asleep, or indeed if she had at all. But at some point, the next time she looked, the face was no longer there. _What the fuck?_ Daylight seeped in through the window and soothed the imaginary incisions from where Ferguson’s hungry stares sliced her body, but she could still feel the remains of that centipede wriggling underneath her skin. She ran her fingers through her tousled hair, got up, stuck her jaw under the tap of the sink, and drank to forget.

Two floors above in a different part of the building complex, Bridget Westfall asked the governor whether she could talk to Franky today.

“The slot isn’t a handholding exercise, Miss Westfall. Doyle is being punished for insubordination which cannot be rewarded with special attention. She will be free to schedule an appointment with you once she has shown proper discipline and returned to her unit,” Ferguson said, arranging the list of incoming inmates in alphabetical order without so much as batting an eyelash in Bridget’s direction.

“Which will be when, exactly?” Bridget pressed.

At that, Ferguson straightened her back as she stood at her desk and looked down at Bridget who suddenly appeared just a little bit smaller. “When I see fit,” she said, each word submerged in a heavy domineering undertone.

No brilliant ideas came to Franky that day in the slot. She had mapped every dot on the ceiling, every indentation in the wall, and every dust particle in her barren surroundings, all to no avail. Wet bangs of hair stuck to her forehead, which was drenched in cold sweat. Countless questions raced through her head, each trying to drown out the last. How long did she have? Where? When? Who would deliver the final blow? Or perhaps the girls would forget by the time she got out and nobody would mention the whole matter of a huge missing drug stash ever again. Hah. As fucking if. This place, it was this place that turned people into misers, its mob rules and routines and the faint aftertaste of blood left behind by every meal. People didn’t forget in prison. People devoured stories and threw them back up when an opportunity arose to trade them for something better, always looking for more, more, more, more.

Those were the words that the figure at her door reminded her of again after dark. “The fuck?” Franky mumbled to herself as she noticed Ferguson standing there concealed by the mourning gown of night. It was those eyes again, always, constantly, incessantly staring at her and looking for more, more, more for reasons beyond Franky’s comprehension. She could see herself surrounded by Lucy and her boys reflected in those eyes. She could see herself pinned to the ground with a weight hovering just above her face. She could see herself on television, the whole world watching as she backed away from the knives and the needles and the irons and boiling oil. She could see Franky Doyle, convicted delinquent with no roots and no future, buried six feet under and much more, more, more in those eyes that kept whispering wordlessly to her. Too much. “What the fuck do you want from me?!” she screamed wishing she had something, anything to throw at the door and break the sinister images in front of her. But she didn’t. She had nothing.

Over time, Franky found herself inching closer to the back wall every night until the only rest she got were minutes spent hugging her knees in the corner with her hoodie up and her hair in her face. Her clothes were her only sanctuary away from the looks crawling across her skin. She imagined breaking down the door and punching Ferguson’s face in but even that mental image turned against her as Ferguson grabbed ahold of her neck and strangled her, her eyes never once straying from Franky’s. Franky grit her teeth and clenched her jaw to stop tears from spilling over her eyelids. That’s what she wants, she thought. For some fucking reason, that’s what she wants.

Two weeks had passed before Franky was released from the slot. More or less. Certainty was a luxury Franky couldn’t afford, having barely slept during that time. The little sleep she had gotten was plagued by dreams red and loud and dissonant. Every day she passed the time doing pushups in the cell until she’d worn herself out enough to pass out for an hour or two, and every night she spent trying to figure out the motionless eyes in the corridor. To her credit, Ferguson had almost made Franky forget about the world on the outside of the inside. That is, right up until Tina Mercado and the rest of them paid her a surprise visit in the showers mere hours after her reintroduction into General, if that. Good news travels fast.

“We know you haven’t had time to sort your shit out, Franky, so we’ll play nice. You just come over here and let us give you a little welcome home present.”

And Franky went, dropping her towel to the floor and surrendering to her fate.

The thing about pain is, expectations make it worse. Thinking about how much it will hurt to rip off the band‑aid hurts more than doing it. Franky had had a lot of time to build up expectations. So for every time her face hit the cold tiles – every time someone’s shoe connected with her stomach – every time she felt a bone crack under the force of the impact, it all came back to her twice over. The loneliness, the aimlessness. She felt almost detached from her body throughout the ordeal, as if she were watching it from the sidelines, through CCTV or in a dream. She didn’t shed a tear. She looked Tina in the eye as the other woman threw another punch at the underside of her jaw, daring her to hit her just a bit harder with her eyes. She didn’t shed a tear, but she did scream – the perish song of a doe dying in a bear trap – when her hand was held down at the wrist and someone stomped on it. Biting on her own lip hard enough to draw blood, she distracted herself by creating her own pain on her own terms. The shooting sensation in her hand – that was her mother slamming the car door on it when Francesca was too slow to get out. The jab in her chest, a cigarette put out against her skin. That was in the past. That was in the distance. That didn’t hurt anymore. Nothing would hurt anymore, not anymore.

“You have one day to get us the gear you owe us. Otherwise, next time we might not be so nice.”

She lay naked and barely conscious on the floor until Doreen walked in to wash her hair – “Jesus Christ, Franky!” – and the next thing she knew (Did she know it, or was that her wishful imagination?), she was in medical and there was a bright light shining in her eye.

She could hear them talking. _I found her like this. Must have slipped and fell._ _Four broken fingers on her left hand. Possibly a concussion. Heavy bruising on her ribs and back, probably inflicted with fists or some sort of blunt weapon. Was there any evidence of sexual assault? None, Governor. But whoever did this did a number on her regardless. And her arms? Those scratches are older, at least a couple of days. Very well, keep me informed. Miss Westfall? Why are you here? I saw the gurney. I thought she might need to—oh, my god._

For the first time in two weeks, Franky tried to focus her eyes on what was in front of her. Through the pink of her blood and the blur she could barely tell who she was looking at. They were blonde and narrow‑shouldered and the wrinkles on their forehead were deep enough to get her attention. She had an idea, but it was the voice that, although it sounded like it came from a locked room miles away, made her sure of something for once.

“Franky, who did this? Who did this to you?” Bridget asked as she sat next to the bed with her files lying forgotten on the nurse’s desk.

“I slipped and fell,” Franky whispered.

Not anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's 4AM as I upload and I did break my own heart writing this, if that helps.


	3. Chip

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long this one is compared to the first two! It was originally going to be much longer but after hitting 2000 words and being nowhere near done I decided to settle for a split in the middle, otherwise we would still be here in 3 years.  
> Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos I've been getting on this story. It means the world to me to have the pleasure of writing for such enthusiastic readers. <3

The nurse’s station was illuminated by a sickly yellow ceiling light that spread over everything inside like a filter. Or perhaps that was just Franky’s vision catching a bit of sepia after the attack—that is, the accident. For better or for worse, at some point shortly after her admission she fell asleep, and if she were conscious enough to think about it, she might even consider thanking Mercado’s squad for providing her with this moment of respite. Dreaming of colorful kites with ribbons and patterns, she barely stirred for hours. In her sleep she was chasing them, the blues, greens, violets, tabbies, stripes, and polka dots. She felt somehow closer to the ground when she wanted to be so far away from it.

_Look, daddy!_

The still small voice of a child escaped her throat when she spoke. She turned around and saw him running after her smiling from ear to ear. There were so many kites for her to catch. Somehow, as she sprinted after the strings floating in the wind, it occurred to her that there was also so little time. For a split second a thick mist hid the kites from her. Kites. Time. The people we’ve lost.

_Look, daddy! Look, daddy!_

Picking up her pace she resolved to beat the mist and the time. The air burned in her lungs but she kept running. She had always been a good runner, and a sore loser. Her father’s rapidly approaching footsteps echoed behind her and she smiled as she reached out, her arm thin and yet uncolored, for a string that just barely avoided contact with her fingertips. Even so, the near‑miss filled her little heart with newfound determination and she turned around again to make sure Daddy was ready to catch them all.

Except it wasn’t Daddy.

It was Joan Ferguson, towering above her like a gothic monolith prepared to squish her precious hopes with half a smirk on her face and a gaping hole in her chest.

Franky’s eyes shot open and she drew in a sharp breath as the kites flew up into the sky and she felt gravity pull her down into her hospital bed. “Fuckin’ hell—” she muttered, glancing over her surroundings to confirm where she was and why.

Registering she was no longer alone in the room, the nurse rose from her desk where she had been going over the list of inmates due for a checkup tomorrow as a result of some accident or other. “Good to see you awake, Doyle,” Rose said.

Waking up to a cute girl looking after her? Sure, every muscle in her body was screaming for attention and every touch of fabric on her skin felt like sandpaper, but Franky would be damned if she didn’t take advantage of that easy cop‑out. She could calm her rapid heartbeat later. “Aw man, all dressed up for me? You shouldn’t have,” she quipped, content with not knowing just how fucked up she looked at the moment.

Rose pursed her lips trying to hide the smile that was creeping up her face and absentmindedly rubbed a sore spot on her cheek. “I see you’re feeling better already. That’s pretty impressive.”

“Hey, there’s no need to flatter me, Miss Atkins. If you’re lookin’ to get a piece of this, all you gotta do is ask.”

Rose raised an eyebrow and shook her head ever so slightly. She had to give it to these women – their ability to bounce back was nothing short of unparalleled. “Anderson said she would come talk to you when you wake up. Thought you might need a peer worker. I’ll go get her. Don’t you do anything funny in the meantime,” she said and made her way for the door.

“Don’t worry, I’ll save the whole show for ya,” Franky yelled after her, flicking her tongue.

As soon as Miss Atkins was out the door, Franky lay her head back down on the pillow with a sigh. Sure, her awakening into a world of pain could have been ruder, but that didn’t make her slip from shithouse to clusterfuck any less intolerable. Expanding her ribcage just to breathe hurt, as did moving her head from side to side. She found herself focusing on breathing into her stomach with her eyes closed to alleviate the worst of it. A heavy weight pressed down on her torso and it took her a good few moments to realize it was the weight of a fresh cast wrapped around her arm. Thanks to the morphine in her system she couldn’t feel her lower arm at all and was not particularly unhappy about it. What she was unhappy about was the fact that she could not remember any of that. Was she still conscious when they put it on? They would have had to mold the cast and hold her still as Atkins forced it around whatever remained of her fingers. If there was a struggle… She tried clenching her broken hand into a fist but the impulse from her brain barely reached her shoulder. “Come on,” she mumbled, jerking her upper body in hopes of eliciting _some_ movement where she wanted to and clenching her jaw when she failed. “Fuck me.”

In that moment, a familiar face appeared in the corner of her vision and Franky quickly wiped away the lonely tear that threatened to give her away.

“I’ll give you guys some privacy,” said Atkins and promptly left.

Doreen and Franky simply looked at each other, neither being comfortable enough to break the silence. “Jesus Christ, Franky,” Doreen finally said, echoing herself from what felt like years before. “How are you feeling?”

“Never better, chief.”

Doreen’s brows furrowed in concern. “I’m not here as your peer worker, alright? I’m here as your friend. How are you really feeling?”

Franky made a sort of half-shrugging movement with the side of her body that was capable of it. “Alright, it might take me a couple days to get back in action, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Who was it?”

“Dunno.”

There was a pause during which the denial lingered in the air between them.

“You know, when I found you, you looked like you were one step away from eating through a straw for the next month and to be honest, you still do. We have to tell Bea. She’ll deal with them, alright? That’s what she’s here for.”

“She’s here because she pumped a guy full of lead, Dors,” the older of the two snapped a bit too loudly for comfort, lowering her voice when she noticed how Doreen flinched. “I don’t need Red’s fuckin’—” she began, looked out through the window of the room and felt her voice dissipate as her eyes glimpsed it. The figure of Joan Ferguson, facing her directly from beyond the wall, her bottomless irises knocking the air right out of Franky’s lungs. There it was again, that half‑smirk that she could just as easily have been imagining, the one that she could have painted from memory of something that she had no proof ever happened. “—help,” she finished, scratching her arm with her good hand.

With a frown, Doreen turned around in the direction Franky was facing and saw nothing but the pristine folds of Mr. Jackson’s shirt tucked in his work pants and a prisoner from C block sweeping the floor. She turned back to Franky, piercing the other woman with her gaze. “Yeah, well, from where I’m standin’, it doesn’t look like you have much of a choice.”

“Then fucking move,” Franky retaliated. “Miss Atkins!” she called and waited for the nurse to show up in the doorway. “We’re done here, thanks.”

Doreen said nothing as she was led away, only releasing a puff of air through her nostrils.

Anything but Red, Franky thought. The idea of coming crawling back to the very person who cut her supply chain and put her in that hospital bed, that was rich. No, she couldn’t truly blame Tina or Cindy Lou – they had no choice. They played by the rules. Bea Smith chopped rules up and ate them for breakfast and somehow always came up on top, having put everybody else six feet under. Bea Smith, the great protector. The words reeked of poison and Franky exhaled deeply, half hoping to expunge these corrosive remnants from her body. Her bitterness didn’t matter now. Red would orchestrate her own comeuppance sooner or later. What mattered now was getting her arse somewhere she could lick her wounds and sharpen her blades.

“How long have I been here?”

“Uh, since last night. How’s the pain?” Rose asked with a sheet of paper in hand ready to swap it for paracetamol at the earliest opportunity.

“Actually, I think I’d prefer to go rot in my own cell,” Franky replied as she slowly got up from the bed gritting her teeth to cover a wince, much to the nurse’s confusion.

“Already? But—”

“I know it hurts to see me leave you so early, but I’ve got things to do, Miss Atkins.”

“You have four broken fingers and you hit your head pretty badly. There’s no way I can let you—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll let you know if I experience any dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, memory loss, inability to wipe my own arse, yada yada. It’s not like I’ll heal any faster in a fancier bed.” Franky waved her good hand dismissively at the nurse and did her best not to _waddle_ towards the door. The less time she spent under the watchful eye of the officers, the better. It was quickly becoming her most precious commodity.

Nurse Atkins gave her a resigned sigh. “Suit yourself. You still have to come back before curfew to get your medication. And first thing tomorrow morning. And before you do anything, Mr. Jackson will escort you to your appointment with Miss Westfall,” she commanded, motioning for Will, who had been standing guard outside, to come in.

Franky’s brow furrowed. “I don’t have an appointment with Miss Westfall.”

“You do now. She requested to see you in her office as soon as possible and the governor agreed that under the present circumstances, a session would be in your best interest.”

“Damn, slipping in the shower really makes a girl popular around here, eh? Do you people have no better things to do?”

“I’m just the messenger,” Rose said and raised her hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender, the _take-it-up-with-the-authorities_ type. “Mr. Jackson.”

“If you want to go, then let’s go, Doyle,” Will said, keeping a reasonable distance from Franky so as to not touch her cast on accident. He had spent enough time around Franky to know she didn’t take kindly to others’ concern, and also to know better than to stand in her way if she wanted to dig her own grave a bit deeper. He wasn’t getting paid enough to take the shovel out of her hands, but he was taking her to a person who was. A win-win situation for everybody involved.

Franky let out an exasperated sigh as she wondered whether there would be a single opportunity for her to catch a break in the near future. “Lead the way, Mr. J.”

* * *

 

Bridget Westfall was not a neat freak. She appreciated order, wrote down her life in a calendar (June 17th – remember to stop by dad’s grave, June 24th – pick up the new blender from Jaycar, July 3rd – coffee with Susan), but her emotional well‑being wasn’t dependent on a fabricated idea of “correctness”, a way her existence was supposed to be. Given her professional life, she knew better than most that some things took time to fall into place. The things she had seen were nothing if not reminders of that very reality. She had seen the best and the worst of humanity, stood witness to some of the rawest moments when nature bared its primal teeth from under the guise of civilization. When a drug addict mother had her child taken away in another prison, the mother’s screams shook the very foundations of the facility, but Bridget hid behind her title and expertise that time, forcing the weight in her chest down with a shot of whisky later that night. When one of her former patients was found exsanguinated and mounted atop a wall in the yard with the needle still in her arm – she had blown the cover of an elaborate escape operation – Bridget waited until she got home to allow her hands to start shaking and her mind to wander into a land of what‑ifs and could‑have‑beens. When a prisoner had her back against the wall – she had pushed too hard, she knew that now, back when she was younger and thought she knew best – Bridget never raised her voice, never moved a stray muscle as she explained that she was not worth undoing them both. That day she closed all the blinds in her home shut, locked all the doors, stuck the backrest of a chair behind the handle of her bedroom door and cried herself to sleep, curled into a ball underneath her covers. Bridget was never caught off guard easily. She rebuilt that distant wall every morning, even on the weekends, even on vacation, even if she didn’t need to. It was necessary. Every now and then she considered a change of career but those thoughts were quickly extinguished. These moments of vulnerability gave her insight she wouldn’t trade for the world. They gave her truth, the only truth there was to life. A truth she would hold close to her heart. The truth that people were tangled, confused beings that could achieve anything if they were just shown the way.

Bridget Westfall had witnessed the teary-eyed smiles of reunited lovers, the peaceful slumber of the deceased, and the twitching fingers of fresh convicts countless times without batting an eyelash, but there was something about that scene that gave her pause. Something reminiscent of those documentaries where a buffalo runs wildly for hundreds of meters before growing weary and succumbing to the venom of a komodo dragon.

_Hold her still, Will! She shouldn’t even be able to move right now. We can discuss the hows and whats of it later, alright? What’s going on with her? Somebody get Anderson out of here, now! Doyle, calm down! We’re trying to help you! Oh, shit. Rose, are you okay? I’m fine, I—I don’t think she’s really conscious. I don’t think she knows where she is. Just hold her down or else she’ll do more damage to herself! Linda, I need you over there. Don’t let her wave that fist around. She shouldn’t be able to— Doyle, can you hear me? I’m going to give you some sedatives now so that I can fix you up. Don’t waste your breath. She’s out of it._

Something… unhinged.

As she was reliving the events of the night before in her mind, a knock on the door brought her back to the present. She rose from her desk and opened the door to see Will Jackson behind the one person that had been on her mind for hours. Franky Doyle stood at her doorstep with a black eye, a scarf holding her arm at an angle, and her hoodie zipped all the way up, which Bridget made a mental note of as uncharacteristic.

“I hear you couldn’t wait to see me,” said the grinning tragedy in front of her.

“Come in.”

At the other end of the corridor, Joan Ferguson watched the inmate cross over the doorstep. She saw it all: Will Jackson’s polite nod, Franky’s hunched posture and unbalanced stance, even the way Bridget Westfall’s hand gently hovered over Franky’s shoulder as she led the younger woman in, wary of boundaries but inching closer ever so slightly. A ghost of a smile crossed her face. Joan knew better than most that some things took time to fall into place.


	4. Sprout

The shut blinds of Bridget Westfall’s office were a lie, Franky thought. A Fata Morgana of privacy that could dissolve into reality with each passing second. Joan Ferguson could be standing right behind those blinds, analyzing the shadowy contours of the figures in the room. Franky half-sat, half-lay in an armchair painted sunflower yellow, legs open leisurely and arms crossed over her chest – one involuntarily, one with deliberate intent – in a somewhat contradictory pose. She stole a glance at the blinds and dug her fingernails into the tattooed curves on her injured arm. In a couple hours she might as well pass by those same blinds in a body bag. They must have thought it was easier, the people in charge. If they provided the women with an illusion of safety, they could wash the blood off quicker when they were proven wrong. After all, they have expressed their concerns. That was the real job of the forensic psychologist – express concern. Look pretty and smile. Bullshit them into believing in a better tomorrow so that they stop fighting the tide and it won’t be our fault when tomorrow never comes.

Bridget followed Franky’s gaze to the blinds and then turned back to the younger woman. “I assure you everything that is said in this room is strictly confidential.”

There it was, the stench of bullshit. Speak so that we can make your future better. Play along, pretend there is a future to improve. Play along and dig your own grave. They must have known her time was almost up, what with the hurry to get her to vomit her traumas to someone who would collect her paycheck and go back to fooling no one but herself on the outside later.

“Why did you have me called here?” Franky asked.

“When I talked to you that day in the library, you were being aggressive on purpose. You were trying to get yourself slotted,” the blonde replied, tilting her head to the side.

“Oh, fuck off,” Franky scoffed. “If you want to play detective, you can forget it. I’m not giving you any names.”

“Now you’re putting words in my mouth,” Bridget said calmly. Her features gave away nothing, not even the smugness or annoyance Franky was expecting. “I never asked for any names. We’re not here to talk about the other prisoners, Franky. I want to talk about _you_.” Franky rolled her eyes, which led Bridget to switch to a different approach. “Your parole hearing is coming up. Have you been preparing for it?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t think you’ll get it? Aren’t you looking forward to getting out of here?”

There was no response. Bridget watched the younger woman intently, trying to figure out how to make herself approachable. Franky’s body language was nothing but defensive since she set foot in her office. The girl was almost sinking into her seat. It wasn’t Bridget she feared, nor was it anything she could say to her. Whatever Franky was afraid of lurked behind those shut blinds. “How would you describe your ideal first day of freedom? How would you like this chapter of your life to end?”

“I’m leaving this place in a hearse. Doesn’t leave much room for imagination.”

“Humor me,” Bridget said, offering a smile in exchange. It was the same smile she had given Franky once before, back when she was slotted. The smile that had almost, for a brief moment, made Franky believe in tomorrow.

“Alright, fine. You want to know how I want to leave this shithole? I want to walk out of those gates while this place and everyone in it is just a smoking pile of ashes. And I want to be picked up by a hot girl – in a hot car – and driven off into the sunset.” A glint of satisfaction appeared in her eye when she noticed the way Bridget exhaled and lifted her chin the slightest bit. That’s right. Be afraid. Back off. Run away. No one will blame you. “How’s that?”

Then Franky saw something in Bridget’s expression she wasn’t expecting. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. What was that flimsy little spark, that reflection that reached out to her? Whatever it was, Franky knew she wouldn’t appreciate the next words to come out of Bridget Westfall’s mouth.

“It says it all. Anger and hope, that’s you all over.”

Franky sneered in disbelief at the audacity of that statement. She felt a pang in her ribcage and it had nothing to do with her bruises and everything to do with the fact that she was, apparently, not allowed to keep her secrets buried as deep as she wanted them to. “You’ve been here for five fucking minutes so don’t make assumptions about me.”

Bridget did her best to maintain her composure, although a hint of a frown did float to the surface. Maybe she had gone too far, missed her checkmark in the scene. Still, she couldn’t have said anything else at that point. Not after she saw Franky Doyle fight even when she was unconscious. Not after she saw that bright flame inside her that threatened to scorch the very ground she walked on. Whatever this woman was capable of – and surely they were great things, if terrifying – Bridget caught herself longing to see it. Longing? Perhaps not. Curious. More like that.

There was a sound not unlike a sniffle and Franky wiped her nose on the back of her hand without breaking eye contact with the other woman. “There’s no fuckin’ hope,” she said, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepening briefly to accompany the humorless smile she put on.

Footsteps shuffled outside the door and someone yelled commands at somebody else. The clock struck a full hour. Not that either woman cared. They let the assertion hang in the silence like a spider descending from its web. Franky, because she was waiting for what she thought would be an inevitable retort, and Bridget, because she could not wrap her head around the level of cognitive dissonance present in this woman who was so full of hope and saw none of it. This woman who clearly wanted someone to show her a truth she already knew. That would not do. Funny how the first rule of storytelling often applied at work, too: show, don’t tell. Franky would gain nothing from being led a step ahead if she didn’t decide the direction.

Finally the older woman broke the spell. “I’m going to help you stop self-sabotaging, Franky.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, Franky tapped her heel against the carpeted floor. This Westfall woman made time go so bloody slow. Maybe if she stayed long enough she could dig herself a tunnel out. Tap, tap, tap. Something was said around that point – _What’s on your mind?_ – but Franky didn’t hear. “How’s life not like a game?”

“Pardon me?”

The tapping ceased. “Your job is to analyze shit, right? Then tell me, what makes life not a game?”

“You want to know whether your actions matter.”

“Nuh. I already know the answer to that question. What I want to know is why we do this to ourselves.” The words escaped Franky’s mouth before she could run them through a filter, stop them, keep the grains in her chest and feed the world dust. “We have these rules for everything. You’re born into a set of rules. You poke your bald baby head out of a vagina and the doctor goes, ‘Oh, it’s a little princess!’ or ‘Congratulations! It’s a boy!’ and bam! You’re suddenly adhering to a set of rules you never fucking agreed to before you can even see. You can’t have breakfast food for dinner because some rich 19th century arsehole decided that we’ll eat cereal in the morning. You can’t tell your girlfriend’s dad he’s a dick when you first meet him. You can’t let someone know you care for them if society’s put you too far apart because that would be inappropriate, because we fucking decided that we’re inappropriate. We’ve created this world and _we_ are _inappropriate!_ ” At some point during her speech she had stood up without realizing it and was now marching angrily from wall to wall despite every bone in her body begging her not to. She shook her head from side to side in between stealing glances at Bridget who laid her arms on the armrests, tethering herself to her seat. “And like in a game, if you break the rules, the others decide you can’t play anymore. They take you and they put you in a nice blue tracksuit somewhere you can’t mess with their fucking scoreboards and their money and their titles and they keep you from playing. And—here’s the kicker—you know what the kicker is?” She ran her hand through her hair, looking up at the ceiling to stop her eyes from welling up. Whatever possessed her to open her mouth was out there and she couldn’t stop herself. She could hear herself speak before she thought, before she felt, before she allowed herself to, before sh— “The kicker is they punish you for not playing their game by _leaving you to rot in another fucking game!_ ”

By all accounts, Bridget should have flinched when a loud thud shook her body as Franky punched the desk, sending several pens rolling off the edge. She should have connected this anger, the thing that defined the younger woman, with violence – like everybody else before her.

She should have, but she didn’t.

“Please sit down.” Her voice was barely above a whisper and came in stark contrast to Franky’s tumultuous monologue. Her lips parted with something unspoken – a plea, promise, prayer, or all of the above – as she locked eyes with Franky again, aquamarine seafoam raining down on envious fire. And like the burnt tree in the desert, Franky dropped back down on the armchair, let herself be swept away under the ocean’s watchful gaze as if she were never ablaze in the first place. Exhausted. Withered. Away.

The distance between them suddenly felt insurmountable for any message. They were two feathers scattered in the wind with little chances of ever meeting again. Or they would have been had Bridget Westfall not gone against her better judgement and crossed the raging waters. For the first time in their session, she left her throne behind, stepped down, and she sat on the small table next to Franky’s seat, careful not to touch but to be felt at the same time. That was close enough. Maybe. God, let that be close enough.

“I can’t deny it. You do have a valid point. We follow rules and regulations in life that we’re not even aware of for reasons we may not consciously understand. But, Franky,” she said, resting her hands in her lap, “there’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

“The purpose of a game is to have fun. Once it’s not fun, it stops being a game. So if you want to believe that we’re all just pawns in some sort of pre‑arranged scheme, you have to admit that you are a player and that you have power over how it plays out.”

Despite the situation, Franky couldn’t suppress a smirk. “You’re pretty good.”

“So are you. You’re smart. You’re studying law. You can make a case, form your own conclusions. So why do you do this to yourself?”

There was no need for Bridget to not play the pronoun game and clarify her question. Her meaning was obvious from the way her gaze paused on Franky’s drooping eyelid and the swollen, blood-filled bump on her jaw. The way it followed the green ink on Franky’s arm down to her cast.

“You know, when I first got here, Boomer wasn’t part of any crew,” Franky began, disregarding the question at hand.

The blonde let her talk.

“She just bashed heads together whenever someone looked at her wrong. She would bash newbies, screws, anyone who pushed her buttons. She reminded me of myself, of that angry chick in the kitchen with a pan full of oil.” The girl looked down as if remembering a distant event. Down and to the right, reexperiencing old emotions and bring them back up to the surface. It was a habit for her as helpful as it was damaging. “These dumb fucks were goin’ around getting off on feeling superior because to them, Boomer is just a stupid fat cow with a short fuse that anybody with half a brain can fuck over. But I got to see what she really is, y’know? The big dumbo would take a bullet for her fuckin’ friends. She has the biggest heart of anyone in this hellhole.”

Suddenly a certain kind of tension came about them, a coarseness to the oxygen they breathed as a dull sheen covered Franky’s eyes and hid her from Bridget’s sight for good. “I’m not like Boomer,” she said.

Immediately after the session, Franky dragged herself to her cell, ignoring the challenging looks and underhanded comments. Most of her focus was preoccupied with keeping herself upright and her pace steady. Predators can smell weakness, and they always go after the sick and the old – once again a rule that made life easier for those who benefited from it. Just once Franky would have liked to be on that side of the fence. However, she stayed in her lane, only exhaling when she got to her cell, shut the door behind her and slid down to the floor with her back against the wall.

She hadn’t even had the time to check her stash before Boomer appeared in the doorway.

The difference between the friend she knew and the woman who walked out of the slot was staggering. Those same fingers that used to ruffle her hair and hold her arms when her anger took over and she tried to punch walls were purple and broken. That same brunette hair that was always spread around her face like a proud mane had been reduced to a clump stuck to Franky’s forehead. Those eyes that Boomer looked into for comfort had become a little more vacant, shone with a little less color. The smile that used to keep her feet on the ground a little less wide. It was Franky – a little less.

“Oh, hey, Booms,” Franky greeted her. The first time seeing the other woman in two weeks and all she could bring herself to say was: “Hey, uh, I’m really sorry about your hands.” She stared at Boomer’s hands as they hung at her sides. They were okay now, mostly. If you met her on the street, you might think she was just wearing random gloves instead of covering dozens of blisters from the steam press. The steam press Franky had done nothing to save her from.

“Hm.” Boomer closed the door behind her and sat down on the floor between Franky and the toilet bowl, knocking a bottle of shampoo and a hairbrush over by accident that neither of the two noticed or cared about. “I reckon ya—I reckon ya learned your lesson, eh?”

Franky said nothing. As far as Boomer knew, Franky saying nothing meant one of two things: someone was going to get fucked, or someone felt bad. Sometimes both. And sometimes feeling bad was good.

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that uh, I got your back, yeah? Nobody’s messin’ with my favorite lezzie, nuh uh. I’ve been workin’ on some real kicker moves lately, some real humdingers, so like, whoever did this to ya can be my next punching bag. I’m kinda needin’ one anyway. Right?”

Shaking her head to force her bangs to cover her face, Franky swallowed in an attempt to stop her lips from quivering. She stopped breathing for a moment, just long enough to let the tears that had been waiting for an outlet finally spill over her eyelids without making a sound. Noiselessly, almost like a ghost she cried as she slowly, carefully lowered her head to rest on Boomer’s shoulder as if she were afraid it was not going to be there the next second. A sense of relief – as close to relief as she could get knowing she was part of a game she couldn’t understand – washed over her as her cheek really did meet with the white of Boomer’s T-shirt. “Thanks, Booms.”


	5. Seedling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been kind of hectic this past week but I wanted to get this one out there as soon as possible because canon is breaking me. It's breaking me and so I will break my daughters, but it's ok when I do it because I solemnly swear that no lesbeans will ever die on my watch. We don't tolerate that shit in my house.  
> Thanks to everyone who's still reading this mess. I've got big plans for it and it's about to get real soon, promise. <3

> “You tell yourself that you’re lucky  
>  Lying down never struck me  
>  as something fun, oh, any fun…”

~ We All Become One (Ashley Barrett)

* * *

 

“In five days we will be receiving a shipment of new trays for the kitchen. Make sure the merchandise is complete.”

Just like that, Joan pressed the ‘end’ button on a call that lasted barely a few seconds. That was more than enough for her purposes. Greetings, small talk, or diversions were entirely unnecessary in Joan’s world. She stood at the window of her office, looking down on a handful of inmates who were having a quarrel in the exercise yard. Following each other in circles like sheep. They needed a dog to herd them, and there one came – Officer Fletcher, always ready to interfere with everybody’s business. Joan knew exactly what they were going to say. _Aw nah Mr. Fletcher, we was just havin’ a bit a’ fun, eh?_ One woman’s lips moved in the pattern predetermined by that same sentence, raised eyebrows punctuating the _fun_ part. Sheep would always be just that, wandering aimlessly in one another’s footsteps, oblivious to the fact that the first was following the last. It was in their nature to know nothing but running, eating, and procreating. Joan, for her part, much preferred the prowling lion who lies in wait until it notices the limp, the bloated belly of a pregnant one, or the small bundle of joy itself. Then – and only then – it strikes, exerting only the required amount of force to sink its teeth into supple flesh and tear at the insides. The insides of sheep.

And there it was, the lamb destined for slaughter. Joan’s eyes locked on Franky Doyle as the latter emerged from the shadows with Jenkins and Conway following suit. Joan was not built to revel in the torment she inflicted on others. Like the lion, she simply fed, attacked out of necessity in order to keep the world spinning and the weaklings in their place. She didn’t derive pleasure from it, but she was obligated to consider how broken Franky Doyle truly was. It was her God-given duty to focus on the slowness to the woman’s gait, the pained grimace that appeared on her face when she thought no one was watching, the quiet exhale she let out when her back hit the wall she chose to lean on. There were no encouraging doodles on her cast save for what appeared to be either a lonely egg yolk or a lopsided sun with a smiley face on it, no doubt courtesy of Jenkins. Nobody else had drawn. Nobody else cared.

Franky was struggling to keep up with the herd, but she had not fallen behind. Not there, not yet. She was merely scratched on the surface.

_Attention, compound. Attention, compound. Exercise period is now over._

Maxine watched the women walk back into the darkness of H block one after another, nodding at Bea from a distance. A basketball rolled over the concrete of the playing field, forgotten, and for a second Maxine envied it. She, too, would have probably been better off minding her own bloody business in a corner away from all this. But when Boomer came to her cell earlier that day and started rambling about, _oh, you know how Franky’s not in shape, yeah, and she’s got this cast, right, so I thought I’d cheer her up and draw somethin’—anyway she’s just, she’s not a bad chick, you know,_ Maxine had to sell her soul. She wouldn’t forget about Franky disregarding Boomer when she was trying to get Maxine on her crew, nor would she forget about the crap medication and all the shit advice Franky had tried to buy her allegiance with. Unlike Boomer, Franky Doyle didn’t care about anyone but herself.

That said, selfishness Maxine understood. She understood the need to carve one’s niche in a world that didn’t make room for you. She understood the constant struggle of never feeling safe in one’s own body. The ever-present need to keep convincing the world of who you are time and time again – Maxine understood that. She was harshly reminded of just how much she understood that every time Fletch called her a man. And, by god, she understood longing for freedom so intense it awoke the primal element dormant within you. Maybe she didn’t understand Franky’s decisions, but she understood her position. That’s why – _Booms, just calm down and tell me what happened, okay? I’m here, just slow down a little._ – _We need to protect her, Maxie!_ – That’s why she stayed behind in the exercise yard. To be on Franky’s side and for their paths to intersect, just this once.

Franky resolutely made her way to the education unit and entered a room with a pool table surrounded by books stacked in unstable piles on shelves all around. Pool was never her kind of game. Franky preferred the physicality of basketball, bodies slamming into each other and innate reflexes winning over patience and calculation. Come to think of it, many of Franky’s favorite extracurricular activities shared the same traits. With a cocked eyebrow she took one of the pool balls in her hand and lifted it up to her face. Normally, she wouldn’t be here, but her choices were limited. The centered number “14” stared back at her mockingly. Unbeknownst to many, prison didn’t just change people. Prison changed rules. Prison changed the meanings of numbers. In prison, pool wasn’t a game. And Franky – for the last time – had no intention of playing. That one ball in her hand held the promise of revolution.

Sure enough, it only took a minute or two before Tina Mercado walked through the doorway followed by a posse of Cindy Lou’s other henchmen. Franky stood still at the distant end of the pool table as the women flanked her from both sides. They wouldn’t act outside of their turn, that much she could count on.

“We are ready to collect,” Tina said. Her winged eyeliner was as sharp as one would expect from a woman going into battle. Franky herself had made sure to put on her darkest eyeshadow complementing her short brunette locks. She wore it like an emblem, a raised flag that served as a first warning. But now she had stepped into the warzone with an equal and all of that décor became a symbol of something greater than themselves.

“I don’t have any gear,” Franky said.

“Then Cindy Lou will finish you now.”

Franky’s breathing hitched.

It happened in a flash. Maxine and Boomer emerged from their hiding places among the shelves, each wielding a sock full of pool balls in each hand. Boomer lunged into the fray with a loud cry, waving her arms around. The woman on Franky’s left went tumbling to the ground like a stack of cards following a direct hit to her clavicle. Franky used this opportunity to lean in with her whole body and throw a punch at the woman to her right amidst the confusion, sending her stumbling into the wall. She jerked her head backwards to avoid a speeding fist just in time to witness as Maxine pushed and shoved her way through to the leader herself, coming up behind Tina and wrapping a muscular arm around her neck while grabbing ahold of her wrists with the other.

“May I have everybody’s attention, please!” Maxine roared and twisted Tina’s arm in a way that made the smaller woman yelp in pain.

All eyes turned to the two of them. The women froze where they stood, some mid‑punch, one lying in the fetal position on the floor. Boomer reluctantly let go of the clump of hair in her clenched fist. Tina shared looks with all members of her crew left standing, silently letting them know to not move a _fucking_ muscle. Within seconds the only movement in the room consisted of the curves of heaving chests rising and falling in irregular patterns. Having determined that her message was received, Maxine nodded towards Franky.

Franky took several calculated steps to make sure she could be seen by everyone in the room – and that she was out of reach of any stray limbs. “You ladies have already had your revenge on me,” she began as moments from the event in the showers flashed before her eyes. A shoe on her stomach. Spit in her face. She didn’t dwell on those. “I didn’t deliver. You fucked my face up. We’re even. Now if you still have a problem with me, that’s your prerogative. But know that I’m allowed to fight back now,” she continued, stretching out her healthy arm and glancing around at the blood stains on the carpet, scattered pool balls, and a hoodie that had somehow found its way to the top of a shelf, hanging on its metallic frame. “And we all know what happens to women who take more than their lot around here, right?”

Maxine saw her cue and strengthened her grip on Tina abruptly, eliciting another scream.

Franky put a hand to her ear. “I can’t hear you guys. Don’t we all know? Don’t we know what happens if you go against the rules?”

A low echo of mumbled yes’s came to answer her question.

“That’s right. From now on, you are going to have to wait for your gear just like everybody else. Have I made myself clear?”

The women stared at her, paralyzed and motionless, their eyes leaping between her and Tina.

Franky’s fingers curled into a fist. For every punch in her gut, every bruise on the back of her head, every slap from her mother, and every time she watched her father’s back get smaller and smaller until it disappeared into the distance, she coated her body in steel and channeled the flames of her rage into one thunderous strike against the pool table, leaving a tear in the green cloth and a deep dent underneath. The others, even Maxine and Boomer, winced at the sound. “ _Have_ I made myself _clear?_ ”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, Franky.”

“Uh-huh.”

Her nostrils flared and she tilted her head back slightly as if to balance an imaginary glass on her chin. “Good. Now piss off. All of you, piss off!” she commanded, punctuating her words with an all-too well aimed stomp on the hand of the woman who was lying on the ground next to her. It was a petty play – improvised, so to speak – but she would be damned if it didn’t make her hurt just a little less.

The women scattered like moths around an unlit flame, stumbling out of the education unit one after another, blood trickling from noses and feet shuffling unevenly past. Franky could finally let out the breath she didn’t notice herself holding. The three left standing shared a sympathetic look – _You guys okay?_ – and, after making sure that nobody had gotten shivved or otherwise sustained any serious injuries (well, not during this encounter, anyway), they took in the mess they had made. Franky focused on soothing her rapidly beating heart. Maxine wiped her hands on her tracksuit pants without a word. And Boomer wondered when she would get to do this again. “That’ll fuckin’ teach ‘em!” she hollered and extended one clenched fist towards Franky, the other to Maxine.

Despite herself, Franky couldn’t suppress a cheeky smile as she tapped her fist to Boomer’s, familiar dimples appearing on her face for the first time in weeks. That was it. It was over. She still had a host of problems to deal with, starting with figuring out a way to get the drugs flowing back in (not that she was planning anything of the sort, of course) and practicing her bullshitting skills for her parole hearing, but those were problems for future Franky. Present‑moment Franky turned to her barely voluntary savior. “Thank you,” she said as she looked Maxine in the eye, her smile fading somewhat. She didn’t break eye contact and instead let herself be judged by the taller woman’s knowing gaze. A lot was left unsaid between them, exclamations neither would voice but which echoed in both their minds. Bea Smith would never know about this, at least not in full. This was for Boomer. Franky survived, above all else, for Boomer.

“Don’t mention it.” Literally.

When Franky returned to her cell after dinner and a stop in medical that was cut shorter than it should have been that evening, she couldn’t drop dead on her bed soon enough. Her mattress was torn and faded and full of springs that dug uncomfortably into her back, but good god, sinking into it at the end of that day, Franky felt like a noblewoman enjoying a 5-star bath in a lavish mansion out in the Scottish countryside on a chilly autumn night. All she was missing was a good backrub, a glass of disgustingly expensive wine, and a woman’s head between her legs. Preferably blonde. Maybe someone who liked to wear her hair up and the top two buttons of her blouse unbuttoned. Someone who liked to sit with her legs crossed, an embodiment of professional poise that would shatter and fall apart at Franky’s hands if she was given the opportunity. Yeah, someone like that would do.

She was just about to slip her hand past the waistband of her pants and down the front when she caught a glimpse of a strange shadow out of the corner of her eye. Of course, she could prop herself up and squint at it to make sure it was nothing. But eh, she was tired, battered, bruised, and would probably keep seeing weird shit with that eye for some time. She closed her eyes and conjured up a rather flattering image of the only therapist she’s ever found to be more than a passing nuisance. Bridget Westfall in a black leather jacket, her head cocked to the side and the corners of her mouth curled upwards the way Franky imagined they were when the woman liked what she saw and wasn’t afraid to show it. Actually, let’s lose the jacket. Bridget Westfall in a button‑up shirt that clearly designated her as someone who didn’t come from Franky’s world, whose irises shone with untold secrets and the desire to play a wholly different game—

Okay, she definitely saw _something_.

With an angry huff, Franky sat up facing her cell door. Her mouth opened to give way to a snappy remark about being busy in here or a not‑so‑gentle _fuck off_ , but the right words never came to her. Or any, for that matter. Instead, every muscle in her body tensed up and her eyes widened as she recognized the blurred figure of Joan Ferguson standing outside.

A rush of adrenaline overcame her senses. She had been threatened. She had been beaten. She had fought. And she was not in the business of repeating herself.

She got up and swiftly made her way to the door, slamming into it with the left side of her body with little regard for anyone standing outside. She marched out into the darkness of her block. A river of black spread out in front of her, silvery moon‑eels swimming upstream through the glass panes of the other seven cell doors. Only the tiny splashes of water dripping from a leaking tap at the end of the hall accompanied the friction of Franky’s feet on the cold floor and the sound of air passing through her own lungs. She turned to the left and saw iron bars blatantly separating her and the rest of the H1 family from the slumbering deep of Wentworth. She turned to the right and saw blankets that had been left haphazardly spread out on the couch when Liz and Doreen went to bed after a late‑night chat over some prime quality government‑issued coffee, flavor “black water”. She didn’t see or hear another living soul wandering the blasted place, only herself. Her body. Her feet on the ground, her palm cradling the empty space in front of her chest, quivering with uncertainty. Her fear.

“What the fuck,” she whispered to herself mostly to hear herself speak and confirm that she was in the real world, a dimension she had been finding harder and harder to distinguish from her drug and exhaustion‑induced dreamscapes lately. Then she grit her teeth and disappeared back into her cell. She wouldn’t think about Bridget Westfall again that night.

Just around the corner, Joan Ferguson slicked back her hair with a glove‑clad hand. Let the hunt commence.


	6. Bud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blending in an out of canon again with this one a little bit, but I trust you will understand why.

> “Sneaking in the pain  
>  Every truth becomes lie  
>  I won’t trust myself  
>  once I hear your call”

~ The Wolf (Siamés)

* * *

 

Hamster wheels.

Nifty little mechanisms to keep your pets entertained and fool them into thinking they’re out in the open instead of running in place in a microcosm of human vanity. You could tape a picture of a corn field on the sides of their cage and fill it with hamster wheels and they would be none the wiser. They wouldn’t need to be, either. What more do they need to achieve happiness than a steady stream of water and food, room to move, ground to dig in, and toys to play with? If they’re being difficult, just put them in a hamster wheel. They will run and run and run and get tired eventually, spinning through the world holding tight to the one anchor they have until the physical forces of nature take pity on them. Then the whole thing can start all over again.

“You are distracted.”

They were all stuck in hamster wheels. Every night Franky would get in hers and run head first into the same brick wall that kept haunting her and somehow never moved out of the way. She could say no to it. She could ignore it, walk around it. It was just a stupid attraction, a diversion, a mocking blade of grass outside her reach that demanded her attention. It was just Ferguson swaying in the wind outside her cage every night, watching Franky stumble in her hamster wheel, never there when reality settled into stasis around her again.

They had had a hamster in her school, back when she was in third grade. His name was Mr. Muppet and he was the class’s first responsibility. The day they brought him in the kids gathered around his cage during recess, scrambling over one another to see him running around his hamster wheel and bursting into fits of laughter when he came to a sudden halt only to keep spinning because the world didn’t care whether or not something so small wanted to stop. One morning, they found Mr. Muppet lying flat on his side. He must have been twitching in seizures throughout the night after spending ages trying to chew his way out through the poisonous metal that kept him closed in. So the school nurse took Mr. Muppet away to treat him, and when he came back, he was a bit smaller, the white patch on his belly seemed less defined, his ears a little more round, and he jumped right back into his hamster wheel.

“What’s going on, Franky?”

Every night Franky twitched in her sleep. There were eyes all around that cage of hers, all of them Ferguson’s, laughter twinkling in them whenever she tried to get off this ride only to slip into another wheel, this time a different shade of metallic grey. Wherever she looked, those eyes were there, only to disappear from her field of vision when she tried to reach for them. Rip them out of Ferguson’s skull. Put them in her mouth and _chomp_. Like an obedient little pet she kept running and running and running.

Running around a hamster wheel. Couldn’t get off. Couldn’t stop. Ran faster.

Bridget’s gaze paused on Franky’s upper arm, which the brunette was scratching again as she stared intently at a single, completely unremarkable dot in the wall. “Franky, come back to me.”

_Franky, come back to me._

It was the strange clash of utterance function versus structure in that still small voice far away that made Franky approach it. Formally, she was being given a directive, but there was no tension in the tone, no fearsome intensity. It was a plea.

Her eyes refocused on the scene in front of her and her projection of corn and grass melted back into a reality in which Bridget Westfall was watching her from across the small table between them, leaning forward slightly in her seat. There was a system to that, too. The longer Franky zoned out for, the closer Bridget was next time the psychologist forced her back into the present. Predictable. Running. Like clockwork. “Do I have to be here?”

She was expecting an exasperated sigh and a furrowing of Bridget’s brow. What she got was a head tilt – one of those – and a face that betrayed nothing all the way up to the blonde’s blue eyes. In them Franky could see a faint, distant light flicker like a malfunctioning streetlight in a tunnel.

“You don’t _have to_ do anything, Franky. I know it can be difficult to understand that in your position, but I am not here to order you around, or command, or lecture.”

“Alright then,” Franky nodded sagely and promptly got up to leave. Her hand had already reached the door handle before Bridget’s voice stopped her dead in her tracks.

“But if you leave, you won’t get to hear the good news I’ve got for you.”

Franky’s jaw dropped slightly in disbelief. Was that… _humor_ … in Bridget’s voice? Right there, there was a smirk that couldn’t be seen but could be heard clear as day. She spoke with a light-hearted rising intonation. When Franky turned around, she could see Bridget gazing at the empty space she left behind, waiting for the change in attitude she knew was coming. The blonde was quick to notice the absence of the sound of her office door opening and turned back to Franky, the subtlest smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Franky rested her healthy hand on her hip and opened her mouth wide in mock surprise. “No way! You’re not wearing any underwear?”

This time Bridget either couldn’t or consciously decided not to prevent a satisfied smile from lighting up her face. She chuckled, motioning towards the now‑empty seat with her chin and then turning back to Franky, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepening briefly. “Unfortunately, that’s not it, but I’m hoping this information could be of interest to you regardless. I’ve convinced Miss Bennett to drop her verbal assault charge against you,” she explained after Franky sat back down.

Franky’s mind was still stuck on the _unfortunately_ when the meaning of the sentence began to sink in. The charge that would fuck up her parole and keep her locked in. It felt so distant, like from another lifetime. But she did remember standing in the kitchen with Officer Bennett after narrowly avoiding a beating, courtesy of Cindy Lou’s crew, the first time. She remembered feeling that the knife in her hand was her only chance of salvation before Vera walked in and disbanded their impromptu rendez‑vous. And she remembered Vera Bennett, the Governor’s pet, being way too out of her fucking depth, so smug in her perky savior shoes.

_Alright, chill the fuck out!_

_Give it a rest, Doyle. I can charge you with verbally assaulting an officer._

_What did I say? What, fuck? Surprised you know what that means!_

_That’s it. You’re coming with me._

Then it dawned on her just what exactly this meant. No charge meant yes to parole hearing, yes to possibly getting out, and maybe in a few months, yes to a new life. No to hamster wheels. Franky’s eyes darted from Bridget to the cloudless sky outside the window, her desk lamp, then back to Bridget again. Her mouth opened and closed several times before she finally spoke. “How?”

“I simply explained that your outburst was directly influenced by the amount of pressure you’ve been under and that positive reinforcement would help steer you in the right direction. Miss Bennett graciously agreed to drop the charge provided that you continue your sessions with me,” Bridget replied.

 _You know, plenty of people have tried to_ help _Franky Doyle. They all failed._

_I assure you, I wouldn’t be making this promise if I weren’t absolutely certain I have sufficient expertise to work with her._

She saw Franky’s back stiffen at the coda of the sentence, saw her begin to scutter back into her shell. “But if you don’t want that, you don’t have to come. Granted, in that case I won’t be able to write a recommendation for the parole board, but as far as Miss Bennett is concerned, I can embellish the truth – to an extent,” she quickly added, never taking her eyes off the younger woman. The details were left out deliberately because by god, Bridget herself didn’t know _how_. She remained still with her hands clasped in her lap, waiting for the response Franky was visibly struggling with.

“Why?” was the only word that the girl managed in the end.

Bridget pursed her lips, becoming painfully aware of how her clothes hugged her body and how the ground beneath her was the only thing keeping her from falling infinitely. The only thing that was keeping her in her place in the universe was the yellow armchair that supported her suddenly weak spine. The temptation to lean back and exhale tugged at the collar of her shirt but there was no time for that. It was her turn now and she had to make her move – the correct move, no missteps, no miscalculations. One wrong word would send the team back to square one.

Honesty had always been her only real option. “Because I’m hoping you will keep seeing me,” she said, her voice slightly lower now but firm as always.

Bridget didn’t recognize the double entendre, too focused on Franky’s reaction, until she saw Franky’s face light up and the way the girl’s tongue peeked out to brush against her teeth. Oh, damn it. She bit the inside of her cheek, looking down in resignation before lifting her head back up, smiling at Franky from under her eyelashes.

“Naw, Gidget! You want us to take it to the next level, eh?” Franky beamed and tapped her feet on the ground excitedly. Finally, something she could do. Something she was good at. The good, the old, the comfortable, like a wooden plank on the wide blue ocean.

“It’s Bridget,” said the blonde as she shifted in her seat.

The lack of a deflection didn’t go unnoticed and Franky wiggled her eyebrows at the other woman playfully. “I prefer Gidget.”

For the first time that day, Bridget felt like she could hear the real Franky Doyle talking, and she was beginning to understand why that was. She shouldn’t have allowed the younger woman to call her anything that didn’t begin with an honorific, and she knew that Franky realized that. Every time the real Franky spoke – _You want to know how I want to leave this shithole?_ – Bridget had offered something. Not a bribe, not a promise – something of her own. Something real that she was professionally obligated to keep under lock and key. So this was how it was going to work between them, then, the push and pull, tit for tat. Bridget’s life was about to get a bit complicated, but then again she had asked for it.

Smirking, Franky took the opportunity that lurked in Bridget’s silence. “Have you always been into chicks or are you a late bloomer?”

That was her pulling, reeling Bridget in on the bait. It would have been easy to fall for it and give the girl what she wanted, but Bridget was to serve a different purpose here in this room. In another place, another time, perhaps. “Why does my sexuality interest you?”

“So you’re not denying it?”

“I am trying to understand why you’re willing to talk about anyone but yourself.” Risky.

Franky let out a puff of air and sank deeper into her seat. “Jeez, Gidge, give me something to work with here! You can’t fool me. I know you’ve got something that’s just _ripe_ for unpacking,” she asserted, raising a cheeky eyebrow at the blonde.

A school memory flashed before Bridget’s eyes from back when she used to fight for her place in the world through blind devotion. It would get her into a whole host of trouble when the bullies dared her to climb up on top of the gym building or spend the night at a cemetery. She felt the sting of her knees scraping on a gritty road and the skin being torn and ripped off to reveal a bloody inner layer one cell at a time. _Jesus, Bridget, what have you gotten yourself into?_ the memory whispered soothingly in her ear. She tucked a strand of hair behind it, never breaking eye contact with the other woman. “Yes, I am a lesbian. Now can we move on?”

Franky grinned from ear to ear, more than content with having won the round. “Yep,” she replied, making a popping sound with her lips at the _p_.

If she didn’t take this step now, she might never get to, Bridget mused. “Care to tell me what’s been keeping your mind so preoccupied?”

“A lot of things,” Franky said with an impish twinkle in her eye.

Deliberate provocation seemed to be her way of deflecting unwanted attention. That was what it boiled down to – Franky making other people think what they wanted to think of her instead of showing herself. She had resolved to exist as a projection of others. Of course, she could only mess with meanings in front of people who understood them, so she must have considered Bridget her equal. That at least promised Bridget a fighting chance. “Such as?” the blonde pressed without skipping a beat.

The brunette’s smile suddenly faded. Couldn’t stop. Had to keep running. “I’m going to die in here, Gidge,” she said, her voice low and eyes growing darker as she stared at the empty space next to Bridget’s head. “I don’t know when or why, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to die in here.”

An ice-cold shiver ran down Bridget’s spine at the admission, slithering all the way from her neck to the small of her back. She stared at Franky with parted lips, language as a concept getting stuck in her throat and smothering her with its edges.

_Jesus, Bridget._

The certainty of it. The calm. Like listing items on a shopping list.

_What have you gotten yourself into?_


	7. Wedge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something from chapter 4 makes a comeback here. Given the fact these two chapters were uploaded some time apart and you might not remember the thing in question, I thought I should make this explicitly clear just in case you find certain events... confusing. You'll know what I mean.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one and to all of you still reading and commenting on this mess, know that I daydream of showering you with your preferred type of foliage on a daily basis, you mellifluous tropical moths. <3

_You say that I’m paranoid_  
_But I’m pretty sure the world is out to get me_  
_It’s not like I make the choice_  
_to let my mind stay so fuckin’ messy._

_– Heavy (Linkin Park feat. Kiiara)_

* * *

 

_I don’t know when or why, and I don’t know how, but I’m going to die in here._

The words rang aloud in Bridget’s head as if it were a church. Except unlike the bells that provided her with comfort at the closeness to God on days she attended mass and let herself be cradled in His all‑loving embrace with all her faults and imperfections, these bells amplified her every breath, every look, every step, subjecting her to merciless scrutiny. Everything she had done and would do wrong was contained in those words. The sound carried not like the baroque echo of a choir but rather like the wails of drowning passengers on a cruise ship filling up with water. The blame would be cast sooner or later. Was it the captain, who had failed to notice the iceberg in time? Was it the ship’s architect, who had not accounted for the possibility? Was it the proprietor, who allowed the ship to embark despite hazardous weather conditions in order to maximize profits? Or was it simply the hand of fate, forever meddling in the best intentions of people? If something were to happen – and Bridget never slowed her pace when a black cat crossed her path or when the calendar notified her it was the 13th day of the month on a Friday, but – if a premonition were to come true, what would she think she should have done over her fifth shot glass? It was better to ask these questions now rather than later. Necessary, even.

She was missing something, some crucial piece of the puzzle that left a gaping hole in the center of the picture. Despite her best efforts and as many sessions with Franky Doyle as she could cram into her schedule that week and justify to the Governor, she failed in getting the young woman to voice her fears in any straightforward manner. This would have been fine under normal circumstances, in her patient world where she worked with clients long‑term and developed communication strategies step by step. But she had found herself in a world that ran solely on the limited resource of time; a world that spared her because she wore black and forgave none of those under her care because they dressed in teal.

She also found herself… not distracted, per se – anything but, in fact. She found herself hyperfocused.

_Because I’m hoping you will keep seeing me._

As she passed by Governor Ferguson’s office, she glanced absentmindedly inside. It was a reflex that stemmed from the subconscious habit to look at the window of a parked car or the reflective metal sides of an elevator. The goal was rarely to ensure she looked presentable, although that also played a role on days that boasted a red exclamation mark in her calendar. However, mostly this urge to catch a passing glance at herself had more to do with assuring herself she could recognize what she saw. That despite everything, it was still her. Despite everything, she and the mirrors saw the world unfold the same way.

Several meters behind Bridget Westfall’s reflection, Franky Doyle sat at Joan Ferguson’s desk, her healthy arm tucked firmly inside the scarf confining her other arm to her shoulder. With a tightening of her jaw, Bridget turned away and kept walking.

“Care to explain how these drugs found their way into your kitchen again?” Ferguson asked without looking up from the paperwork she was in the process of signing. This inmate was smart; she and Franky both knew there was no need to keep up a charade of seriousness. It would do neither of them any good if Joan were to express anger or disappointment or disbelief or any other emotional handicap governors were so often plagued by. This was about presenting the facts: a sizeable pack of heroin (in Franky’s cruder words, a _fuckload_ ) had arrived with the shipment of new trays to Wentworth that morning and Franky was responsible. Franky was the one who orchestrated the delivery and the one who would be punished for it. All that mattered to Joan was that both women were on the same page on the matter.

“I wouldn’t know anything about it,” Franky shrugged.

“So you are not going to admit that after Spiteri’s unfortunate departure to the slot after the last failed heist, which we both know, given your involvement with Spiteri, was carried out at your order, you observed the increase in demand and conspired to bring these in?” It was sound logic. Ferguson was right about most things. The last drug delivery to enter the prison kitchen had been Franky’s idea and Jodie took the fall for it. Sometimes Franky could hear her kicking her mattress when she was slotted in her close vicinity. Ferguson also knew that women who don’t get their money’s worth can get particularly… antsy. They hunger. They go foaming at the mouth and suddenly everyone, even the hand that feeds, is a target.

Franky didn’t fail to notice the way Ferguson’s gaze paused on the cast around her arm, scraping at the hard material, digging its way underneath to fractured bones. Franky’s breathing quickened ever so slightly so that even she wasn’t fully conscious of it, but Joan heard immediately. She clawed at Franky’s wounds with clear intent and she _heard_. It was the expected reaction, after all. Nature had so many ways to show fear, so many ways to disenfranchise those too weak to keep up with its pace. The averting of one’s eyes, blood pumping fast in the prey’s veins, a shift in posture, a change in topic, fingers grasping at the hem of a shirt, pupils dilating… Tell‑tale signs of fear played right into Joan’s hands, therefore she had to be able to recognize them with astonishing accuracy. The thought of eliciting them in Franky Doyle thrilled her – for strategic reasons, nothing more. The greater Franky’s fear, the closer she was to her goal. The closer she was to… But it wasn’t nearly enough. Not yet. She knew this when Franky leaned forward, placed one elbow on Joan’s desk, and bit back.

“Are you off your meds? Because you seem to be hallucinating your head off,” Franky snapped.

Ferguson let out a chuckle that sent a shiver down Franky’s back. “Very well, then. Rest assured we will prove this was your doing sooner or later, and given your current… predicament, you might want to hope it is sooner, before you have another unfortunate accident. You may return to your unit now.”

Franky could feel the familiar tinge of anger bubbling beneath her skin. Ferguson was taunting her. It didn’t matter why. The bitch had a clear idea of the state the women were in, but she was wrong about one thing. Franky hadn’t brought in any new fucking gear. If she had, it sure as fuck wouldn’t have gone through the kitchen. She stood up abruptly, the corner of her mouth twitching before she locked the provocation away on a deserted island in her mind. Still, she stared the Governor down, her healthy arm falling to her side and her fingers curling into a fist. “Why are you always watching me? What’s your deal?”

Joan suppressed a victorious smirk. _Check._ What an extraordinarily poor move! Would it really be this easy? Attack had always been Doyle’s only form of defense, but revealing the need for it this early on… The only thing Joan could not predict as reliably sometimes was the full extent of people’s limitations. Lure them in, bait them, show a wrist or an ankle, then ambush. Was this really it for Franky Doyle? A few night visits and some planted drugs? She had expected more.

Pathetic.

Joan rose from her desk, adjusting one of the buttons on her uniform. She took her time crossing the boundary between them until she stood directly in front of Franky Doyle, towering above the girl and piercing her skull with her gaze. “The doctors in the psych unit are currently taking care of several inmates who are suffering from extreme paranoia. It’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind. You might want to be careful not to say things that could be…” she began and chose this moment to delicately straighten a fold of the scarf around Franky’s neck.

Franky couldn’t move.

“...easily misinterpreted.”

There was nothing in those eyes. Franky searched them relentlessly, checking every nook and cranny for a semblance of humanity, and came up empty‑handed. There was nothing but Franky’s own reflection staring at her, a reflection of her that had rivulets of warm tears running down her cheeks and no voice to resist with. There was nothing but the sound of her own screams. Nothing but the sight of her own blood pooling on the floor. Nothing but the cursed image of a reality Ferguson wanted her to see.

There was nothing.

Franky stood on the spot, paralyzed.

There was nothing, there was nothing, there was nothing.

Ferguson turned away, walked over to the door and opened it, making eye contact with whoever was standing on the other side. “Miss Bennett, kindly escort Doyle back to her unit. In the meantime, Miss Miles can bring in Jenkins.”

As soon as Officer Bennett was out of her sight, Franky stopped pretending to be minding her own business and made her way out of her block, past the phone booths, and back upstairs to the offices with resolute steps. Officer Murphy inquired about her purpose there and she deflected the question with as much patience she could muster at the moment, claiming to have forgotten her hoodie with the legal advisor who came in to gather a hollow paycheck for his bullshit, bare‑minimum‑required‑by-the‑state advice once a week. Officer Murphy was generally too busy playing _Angry Birds_ on her smartphone to ever notice that Franky would never need the man for anything. Or that Franky’s hoodie was tied around her waist.

She reached the door labeled _B. Westfall, forensic psychologist_. The blinds were shut. No sounds were coming from behind the glass. Miss Westfall’s office was pretty decently soundproofed – what with all that confidentiality – but you could usually at least tell whether or not it was occupied. Franky bit her lower lip and she looked around the otherwise empty hallway as her hand reached out to knock.

At the same time, Susan Jenkins sat down in the chair Franky had occupied moments prior. Ferguson was saying something about drugs. Yeah, the gear, yeah. Of course Boomer had noticed the commotion when it was found, and the subsequent cell toss raid. They didn’t find anything in H1. The girls had nothing to do with it. Franky Doyle? What about Franky? Nah, she was in medical for a checkup at the time, yeah. Franky had nothing to do with the gear, scout’s honor.

“Sorry I can’t be of any help to ya,” Boomer said, her head bowed slightly in submission.

Ferguson gave her a sympathetic look as she brought her chair along to sit down next to Boomer. She sighed as if she knew something that Boomer didn’t, making the inmate’s brows furrow. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”

Back in the hallway, Franky let her arm drop to her side again and began pacing back and forth in a small circle. She would have to force belief into Bridget, bash her with uncomfortable truths. An odd conundrum, given the fact Bridget was usually the one convincing others. She was the one who initiated their contact by convincing Franky, through a smile, that there was something of merit to be discovered in the unknown. Franky ran her hand through her hair. _Easily misinterpreted._

“Come to what now?” Boomer asked. She watched as Ferguson pulled a recording device from somewhere behind her back and held it in her palm in front of her.

“I must warn you, this might be quite a shock to you. I would prefer not to show you, but you have given me no other choice. In order for this to end, you need to know the truth.” With that, she pressed the play button.

_Boomer is just a stupid fat cow with a short fuse that anybody with half a brain can fuck over._

Boomer felt her ribcage collapse in on itself. She knew that voice. Couldn’t have mistaken it for any other. It was the same voice that talked common sense into her when she thought she was about to lose her mind, the same voice that had struggled to form words last time she was in Franky’s cell and had her arm wrapped around the woman. Joan pressed the play button again.

_Boomer is just a stupid fat cow._

“It is part of a dialogue that occurred between Doyle and Miss Westfall earlier today,” Ferguson said matter‑of‑factly. “Normally, these sessions are strictly confidential, of course, but my hands were tied on the matter under the circumstances. After what happened to Doyle last time the drugs didn’t make it to her customers, the staff felt that without a confession, she would find herself in mortal danger.”

Franky cursed under her breath, turned on her heel and left the hallway. Fuck this place, and fuck Joan Ferguson, and fuck Bridget Westfall, and fuck Wentworth once and for all.

“Doyle didn’t confess to smuggling the drugs in during the session, but she did present this… delightful insight into your character. Now, Susan,” Joan paused, “you have to ask yourself one simple question: are you willing to let someone else take the fall for a friend like her? Or will you let us punish her accordingly for her misdemeanors?”

Boomer looked up at Ferguson, defiance evident in her eyes despite the tears that were sure to spill over within seconds. Her voice was shaking when she said: “I dunno anything about the gear, Gov‑nor.”

Franky was standing by the window in her cell tapping repeatedly at the wall. She considered stopping, but then another thought sent her pacing towards the sink and digging her nails into one of the posters hanging over her bed, then to the shelf, then the window again. She was side‑stepping in place with her back to the door when Boomer burst in and Franky didn’t have enough time to turn around before the significantly bigger woman body slammed her into the wall, sending a new wave of pain through her injured arm. Franky didn’t see her, but she recognized Boomer’s sobs as her friend held her head pinned to the wall with one hand and her arm behind her back with the other. “Booms, what the fuck?! What’s going on? Hey, calm down!”

Boomer shoved her roughly aside. When Franky turned to face her, she saw Boomer’s cheeks bright red with anger and a vein on her forehead pulsating. The tattooed brunette took a cautious step back, moving out of the immediate reach of Boomer’s arms as she waited for a clue, any clue that could tell her what the fuck was happening.

Boomer’s eye twitched and she exhaled heavily several times before speaking. “You’re a piece of shit.”

Franky all but shook her head. “Booms, I don’t know what you’re—”

“Shut up! _Shut the fuck up!_ ” Boomer roared and grabbed a bunch of Franky’s magazines off the shelf, ripping them in half on impulse. “After all the shit I did for you! Short fuse, huh?!” She threw the torn snippets on the floor and stomped all over them unceremoniously before grasping the edge of the picture‑ and photograph‑laden board on the wall and sending the whole thing crashing down. All Franky could do was move out of the way. “I loved you, but you know what? You’re _shit_! You’re just a _worthless,_ _backstabbing piece of shit!_ ”

And with that, she raised her hand high up in the air, moved her body forward, grit her teeth firmly, and slapped Franky across the face.

Franky’s head snapped unnaturally to the side. A high‑pitched clink rang in her ears. She stumbled and her back hit the wall as a crimson velveteen imprint bubbled up to the surface of her skin as evidence of what had just come to pass all the way from her temple to her jawline. She covered her cheek with her hand instinctively, although it did very little to ease the burn that pricked the sensitive tissue underneath. “Booms, we can talk about this, I don’t understand—I didn’t do anything, I promise I didn’t do anything–” she stuttered, tears spilling over her eyelids.

Boomer scoffed, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “You can drop dead for all I care, you lying skank.”

Liz had just arrived to see what the commotion was all about. All of H1 could hear the sounds of struggle as they echoed through the block. Doreen had hidden in her cell with Jess Warner, patting her pregnant belly soothingly and rocking back and forth on her mattress. Bea had turned to Franky’s cell but remained seated at the common table, chewing on a chocolate chip cookie. It didn’t exactly sound like anyone was breaking any rules, and she really had had enough on her Top Dog plate distributing justice throughout the day. Besides, it was probable that Franky was the reason the screws had been on their arses all day in the first place, so Bea found it difficult to spare any sympathy for her at the moment. If her rebellious attitude cost her her friendship with Boomer – well, that would be a shame.

“Now, now, what’s this all about?” Liz asked meekly on Franky’s doorstep, taking in Franky’s and Boomer’s disheveled hair and the royal mess that had become of the cell.

“Don’t ever let her show her face around me again,” Boomer said as she moved past a very confused Liz and disappeared, off to find something punchable.

Liz blinked several times and was just about to direct her next question at Franky when the younger woman put a decisive stop to the words forming in her throat.

“Just get the fuck out of here.”

It seemed dangerous for anyone to fail to obey either of the two parties involved in the confrontation – what with the shameful mark on Franky’s face and the way her eyes shot daggers in any direction that dared to meet them – so Liz did as she was told, closing the door on her way out and letting out a concerned sigh.

Inside, Franky’s lip quivered, and as soon as she determined everything that breathed was far enough out of earshot, she let herself fall to pieces.


	8. Interlude: Hachikō

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In 1920’s Japan, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University taught his dog to walk with him to the train station, from where he would leave for work, every morning. Every afternoon at the same time, the dog would wait for his master to step off the train that brought him back home. One day, the professor collapsed while giving a lecture at the university. He didn’t come home that afternoon, or the next, or any day after that. For the next nine years, nine months, and fifteen days until his death, the dog would keep coming back when the right train was about to enter the station, eagerly awaiting his master’s return. In 1948, a bronze statue of the dog was erected that still stands at the Shibuya Train Station today.
> 
> He became known among the locals as “chūken Hachikō”, or “the faithful dog Hachikō”.

Bridget Westfall didn’t take work home. She used to when she was younger and she learned the hard way that overlapping lives came with a price, ruining one or two long‑term relationships that way when she couldn’t force her mind to stay in one place long enough. Yvonne – that was the name of the last woman to leave with a piece of her heart in her pocket – would grow endlessly irritated whenever Bridget’s eyes glazed over as her thoughts raced back to a client’s situation not too long after she’d walked in the front door. It was Bridget’s fault, she’d say, always Bridget’s fault, because the blonde couldn’t find a comfortable place for herself in her own life. A damn shame, too. Bridget knew love; she had known hands that used to wrap a blanket around her when she’d fallen asleep on the couch with the window open. She had known eyes that would light up every time they saw her and feet that would rush over to her even if they were bare and the road to her was paved with a thousand thorns. She knew all that, let her wings bring her down to it, and, against her better judgement or even will, tended to take flight again shortly after. She couldn’t blame the arms that tried so hard to embrace her for eventually coming to the conclusion that she didn’t want any of it.

After Yvonne, none of this mattered. Her house was empty and her cat didn’t care whether she told him stories of prison lynching or the foreign film festival. Still, Bridget would come home and throw her work clothes into the laundry basket right away. When going out with a friend, she would only wear her “home” shoes. She would only wear her diamond-shaped silver earrings to work, because they belonged to only one of two Bridgets. And, as she had come to understand, the two Bridgets weren’t very good roommates.

Sometimes Work Bridget began talking – in her mind or mumbling to herself as she crouched over a bowl of cat food – and Home Bridget wouldn’t let her finish. She’d say, _I know this is something we need to talk about and I will listen, but not now_. Communication, that hammer of witches that stands at the precipice of faith, was something she had to learn to command in all shapes, sizes, and forms to stay sane. Teaching others how to express themselves would be a moot effort if she hadn’t herself mastered the cartography of emotion – at least as much as one can when they have no one to talk to. Like any human being, she slipped sometimes, over a bottle of wine when a scene on the television hit a bit too close to home, but by and large Bridget kept a constant lid on that still small voice inside of her.

But Bridget wasn’t at home anymore.

She had waited until the next day. She had waited until the correctional officers dispersed after the routine morning announcement (no emergencies last night, a plumber will be called to fix the leaking tap in the H3 lounge, three new inmates will be entering the prison on Wednesday and their peer worker must be informed accordingly), helped herself to a cup of Earl Grey (no milk and no sugar), marched into her office a good half hour before her first appointment of the day (Doreen Anderson is suffering from extreme anxiety for fear of losing her unborn baby), and popped the cap off all her muffled thoughts. “Franky Doyle,” they whispered. “What are we going to do about Franky Doyle?”

The truth of the matter was, Work Bridget wasn’t invited into her home and, like a vampire, could never cross the threshold at her door. However, Home Bridget would accompany Work Bridget throughout the day quite often. She would show herself in barely perceptible moments, for example in the way she put everybody else’s freshly washed coffee mugs back into the cupboard (getting rid of a little clutter goes a long way), the way she watered the potted peace lilies she got for her office, or the one crossword puzzle that had been sitting in her drawer unfinished for weeks. Although she remained wholly professional in her interactions, this intersection made it hard for Bridget to separate her two halves in her comparatively uncontrolled work environment.

So when her thoughts crashed right back into Franky Doyle, Bridget couldn’t tell which one of her was talking. As she sat back and observed her feelings – just let them flow, let them breathe, then look back – the one outline she could see clearly in the Gaussian mess of her internal monologue was concern. It had become a ritual for her and Franky, meeting every other day, Franky making lewd jokes, Bridget offering a bemused but not dismissive smile in return. Every other day the door of her office opened to reveal the tattooed brunette on the other side, and each time Franky was frowning a little less in that first moment, until that frown turned into somewhat of a smirk. Every other day the psychologist took one more small, miniscule step towards bridging the gap between them, finding out how boring prison life was for Franky, how exhausting it was to be Top Dog, and – indirectly – how much stress Franky was under given, among other things, the depth of the scratches on her arm. In return, she allowed the inmate to witness some of those Home Bridget moments, because it was unsafe for them both. Franky lived unsafe. She couldn’t bear to look too deep inside herself, but she could easily navigate the unsafe.

Bridget knew that one day, Franky would stop coming. That this game between them – the only one Franky seemed to truly enjoy – would end. That at the same time the following week, it would be a different annoyed prisoner standing at her door. What she had to dissect was the reason _why_.

_Your arm – do you know why you keep doing that?_

_Just a bad habit._

_A new one. There were no scratches the first time we talked, outside the library._

_You’ve been checking out these guns since day one, eh?_

She blamed the butterfly effect. A change somewhere in the prison, a flap of a wing, resulted in a hurricane between Franky and her. Bridget had had a pet butterfly once as a child. It cast the smallest of shadows as it took off towards freedom against the cloudy grey sky like drying paint. Clouds, they could stand as symbols for so many things. Where she saw an ice cream cone, what would Franky see? The icy chill in Franky’s eyes as she looked through Bridget and into her future. Focus, Bridget.

_You’ve been here for five fucking minutes so don’t make assumptions about me. There’s no fuckin’ hope._

A clear oxymoron. If nothing else, Franky Doyle was angry. Her anger bubbled up to the surface in the library and in Bridget’s office and in all the walls she kept putting up in front of people. And anger, well, anger is a powerful motivator. Anger describes a desire to improve what it is directed at. And if there is a desire to improve, there is an underlying condition – belief that improvement is achievable. Hope. Franky Doyle was the most hopeful person Bridget had ever met and she didn’t even realize it.

Bridget stared at the page headlined _DOYLE, Francesca_ for the umpteenth time since she had met the girl, looking for something that would tip her off. Sex: female (duh, we’re at a women’s prison, but paperwork is paperwork, Bridget guessed). Date of birth: 02/05/1987. Nationality: Australian. Next of kin: N/A. Crime: aggravated assault resulting in grievous bodily harm. Sentence: 7 years. Attacked a TV show host with a pan of boiling oil, causing severe burns to the victim’s face and scalp. Involved with a number of contraband smuggling‑related incidents (full description in the appendix). Assumed the position of Top Dog after the death of former leader Jacqueline Holt at the hands of inmate Bea Smith. Does not generally participate in the prison’s welfare programs (with the exception of the prisoner re‑education program devised by former governor Erica Davidson). Prone to physical violence. Total number of days spent in isolation: 128 (see list of dates and offenses below). Possession of a shiv. Attacking another prisoner (Lucy “Juice” Gambaro, then in H3). Damage to prison property.

Based on every piece of information about Franky Doyle available, it would seem the woman was not scared of anything. She had been assaulted, cut, beaten, and responded with the same in turn and harder. Which hinted at a deeply uncomfortable possibility.

_Do you feel uncomfortable telling me what triggers you because I haven’t earned your trust, or do you fear possible consequences?_

_You sure trigger me, Gidget. Look, the concern is kinda hot, but I’m a reformed individual and I’m really just focused on getting the hell out of here. You people overthink shit too much._

Franky Doyle was scared of everything. How the hell does one talk her way through that?

_You prefer being in control._

_I prefer not getting fucked over._

_So you do the “fucking over” instead. Kill or be killed, yeah?_

_Heh. Didn’t think this would be the way I hear you say the fuck word for the first time._

Still, Bridget could take comfort in one thing she had learned from their sessions – that no matter how out of her depth, no matter how disillusioned or crestfallen Franky was, she was never angry with _her_. Even when the darkness spread over her eyes, Franky never intended to harm _her_. For better or for worse, she didn’t feel the need to change _her_. They could get through this. And Bridget knew she would keep waiting for the brunette to knock on her door until the day they did.

“Doreen Anderson for you, Miss Westfall,” Will Jackson’s voice interrupted her train of thought. Bridget lifted the file in front of her, dropped it carefully inside a drawer, and locked Franky Doyle in it for the moment.

“Good to see you, Doreen. Would you like a cuppa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was difficult for me to write so I apologize if you perceive a lapse in quality. I'm at that stage of writing where I know exactly where I want to take this but I'm not quite sure how to get there at the moment, which is why I needed a short "buffer" chapter - bridg(et)ing the gap, so to speak. Please be patient with me while I refill my inkwell.
> 
> And as always, I thank every reader for your continued support and being the wind under my wings, you fluorescent mosaic cubes. <3


	9. Vegetative

Falling asleep that night – or doing her best to imitate the act – as she rubbed her cheek as if Boomer’s palm was still there, Franky thought she heard a sound. A distant, high‑pitched chime tickled her eardrum. She lifted her head trying to determine the location of the source, but wherever she turned, it kept coming from her left, this irritating, monotone frequency like chalk on a blackboard behind three sets of closed doors. _Ringadingading_. It was reminiscent of Morse code, the way it came in shorter or longer bursts, an endless message typed up by a hypergraphic. _Ringading_ — She stuck her index finger in her left ear and pressed down.

Then she pulled it out.

— _ading._

Franky let out a puff of air through her nose, turned on her left side, planted her head firmly on the pillow, and surrendered to restless slumber scratching at her arm.

In her own cell, Doreen snored softly, her sleep undisturbed by nightmares for the first time in days after Miss Westfall assured her with logical arguments delivered in an encouraging tone that the prison was more than equipped to handle her pregnancy and no harm would come to her baby like it had the first time. Jess Warner had been moved to the cell next of hers and shared stories of the babies she used to care of at her job – _And one time, I took her out on the front porch because she liked to wave at the birds, and she was reaching her tiny hands into the sky like, like it was right in front of her!_ – before curfew. She would make a great alternate carer, Doreen thought before she drifted off.

Bea Smith was out like a light after one of her longer days. All the “fanmail” she’d had to read through, women of all ages – and multiple men – showering her with platitudes and words of praise and thanks for standing up to the system by firing one small lead bullet into the brain of the man who killed her daughter. It weighed her down. Thank you for ceding your name and letting it become intellectual property of all who wanted to use it to fight this or that. Thank you for unwittingly becoming the authority on justice. Thank you for letting the free people hide behind your shield, because you can’t get hurt but we in power, we are the ones suffering. Thank you, Bea Smith, for being the patron saint of a cause you didn’t spare a single thought on when you pulled the trigger. If only the words she heard on the inside were half as flattering. Juice did this, Tina did that, Franky’s mental, fix it, fix us, put us back together. Bea stirred in her sleep, her blood red curls spread over the pillow. Be the hero they created until we find somebody else.

Liz had been asleep for a long time, having drunk herself into a stupor. Her daughter Sophie had been incarcerated at Wentworth and charged with reckless endangerment, driving under the influence, and manslaughter. Not that Liz would know about the charges. Liz knew that her baby had followed in her footsteps, discovered how easy alcohol made living for a few fleeting, fleeting moments, and made the same bloody mistakes after seven years of her mum shutting herself out to prevent it. And the worst part? Knowing the booze was to blame made it so much easier to let herself go there again. When she drank, it was all a haze. When she drank, it wasn’t her responsibility. It was the fault of the fairy who kept leaving “shampoo” bottles in her cell. A fairy who really didn’t want her to be anywhere near Doreen Anderson’s baby, or so the walls would say if they could talk.

If the walls could only talk, they would wonder out loud why Maxine Conway was still awake. They had witnessed the uncomfortable conversation between her and Bea about Maxine helping Franky that time. Of course the Top Dog would catch wind of it sooner or later. _I was just the muscle preventing an ambush_ , Maxine defended herself. _There was no time to inform you. She didn’t break the rules. She knows it’s never going to happen again._ And Bea acquiesced without protesting further with a stern but understanding look in her eyes, for their lives would mean nothing if they wasted them away turning a blind eye to what mattered.

No, Maxine Conway wasn’t awake and staring firmly at the ceiling with her hands crossed behind her head because of the confrontation, the walls would chatter between themselves. Surely she was awake because Boomer, her best friend, had come to her earlier reduced to a hulking mess of tears and snot, words tumbling incoherently from her mouth. Without proper training in the art, one could hardly understand her, but it was clear that something _Franky_ something _bitch_ something _how could she_ something _keep her away_ something _fuck Franky_. Boomer was never very good with words and half that when she was upset. But Maxine had seen her like this before – seen her like this because of Franky, no less. She knew what to do from experience, held Boomer close as her thick arms slammed half-heartedly into Maxine’s abdomen that felt just enough like Franky’s body would beneath her fists. Soon enough the words ingrained themselves in her own mind. Fuck Franky. Maxine didn’t want to succumb to the anger but it chewed her up and spit her back out more determined than ever before to make sure this never happened again.

But the walls could not talk, and so they said nothing about how all of H block was far too preoccupied to notice the shadow of Joan Ferguson roaming the territory without making a sound, cranking the door of Franky’s cell open just enough to steal a book, swap bottles, or leave a note that said LYING SKANK in blood red, bold, fake handwriting. Franky whimpered in her sleep, weeks of exhaustion preventing her from waking up to escape the nightmares in which she swam up to the surface of the water and inhaled sharply as she broke it only to realize as she looked around that there was no land in sight. She was kicking the water until her legs cramped up and her head disappeared in the depths again, arms reaching aimlessly upward until another quick jolt of energy made her body forget the pain and just find a way to _breathe_. And down she went again, with a mouth full of salt and her fingers holding onto what was never there. And up. And down again, each time for a few seconds longer. Ferguson would have been blind and deaf not to notice how labored Franky’s breathing had become, how her fingers twitched involuntarily in irregular intervals. She tilted her head in an oddly childlike manner as she observed the girl. Franky looked and sounded so unlike her waking self in these moments it would have been hard to believe it was the same person if Joan didn’t know any better. If Joan didn’t know exactly how deep the roots of her infection went.

However, as for H block – it was too busy, too crowded, and far too disturbed to care for the seed it was growing.

Maxine was well aware of Franky’s presence nearby as she sat on a bench and oversaw the basketball game in the exercise yard the next day. She didn’t make Franky the target of disdainful looks or as much as batted an eyelash in her direction, really. She was not in the business of reveling in other people’s drama or letting them know her opinion. They could fill in the blanks themselves, even in here where stories came in short supply. Maxine would have been perfectly content not interacting with Franky Doyle that day or any other day in the foreseeable future, but Franky had other plans, it would seem, because of course she would.

“Hey.” Franky sat down on the bench next to Maxine, taking advantage of the empty space and bending her leg to rest her foot on the hard stone slab.

“Hi,” Maxine offered in return without as much as tilting her head towards the other woman. Her tone was sharp and unwelcoming.

Aha. The message was clear and received. “Booms told you,” Franky stated matter-of-factly as she watched Kim Chang score a ball for her team and strike a victorious pose.

“I have zero interest in having this conversation, Franky.”

She should have just dropped it there, Maxine thought. Take a bloody hint. This woman, this _child_ sitting next to her knew nothing of manners and the thought of having to educate her left a bitter taste in Maxine’s mouth. Why her? Why should it be her to pick up the pieces of a frame she never shattered? This whole paradigm of prison making everyone’s problems communal problems could have really used some work. They lived together, they coexisted, but that didn’t mean they _had to_ be family. Maxine didn’t want people like Franky Doyle in her family, that much the younger woman assured her of.

Silly her. She had seen Franky Doyle on TV taking her anger out on the host. Had almost felt sorry for her at one point. She had seen her bend and snap and shoot through her enemies of the day like a bullet. There was no way in hell Franky Doyle would ever let anything go.

“Can you just listen to my side of the story?” Franky paused for a moment and ran her fingernails across her arm.

Maxine raised an eyebrow at Franky’s question – as opposed to the expected command – and turned to face her for the first time, silently allowing her to continue. Acknowledgement, that was a good start.

Franky inhaled deeply before speaking. “I didn’t do anything, alright? Seriously, I don’t know what her problem is. She came at me and she started screaming at me but I couldn’t understand a word of it, you know how she gets, right? You know her, you know what I mean. Just give me a bloody pointer here. How can you possibly expect me to fix this if I don’t even know what’s going on?”

A sad smile appeared on Maxine’s face and fled as quickly as it came. No surprise there. A fact that split a crack in Maxine’s ribcage given how much she was, deep down, looking forward to being caught off-guard, not knowing, being wrong for once. A haze of familiarity was cast over everything around her making the world bleed in sepia because nobody could snap out of it lately. “You know what? I wanted to believe in you. For Boomer’s and for your own sake, I wanted to believe you weren’t the selfish, self-centered prick I took you for, I really did.” The words rose slowly in her throat as if she were a tired grandmother telling a long, winding tale of the past to an audience much too young and impatient. Her voice was firm and calm, delivering judgement with unwavering resolve that had been there since before Franky first opened her mouth. “If you gave a shit, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now. You’re here talking to me because you’re worried about how you will cope now that you’ve lost your loyal bodyguard for good and I’m the next best thing you’ve got. And you know I won’t protect you anymore. You’re scared of what I know, what they know,” she went on, nodding towards the women tackling each other on the basketball court, “what the screws know and how they can use it against you. And I wish, I truly wish your cluelessness in hurting the people who love you surprised me, but it doesn’t. Not in the slightest. Because you, honey, you don’t care about _anyone_. And if you keep this up, then sooner or later, no one will care about _you_.”

Bullseye. In a lonely faraway corner of her mind reserved for anxious doubt, a single fragment of a thought wondered whether she had stepped over some sort of line she didn’t see as Franky gulped down a lump in her throat and nodded almost imperceptibly, skulking away as soon as the dust settled over Maxine’s words.

Maxine recognized this pattern. Hide so they can’t see you break. Run away and make it look like you’re the victor. Perhaps she should have altered her language slightly, she thought, but then the memory of Boomer sobbing in her arms made her jaw clench. No, she shouldn’t have. Franky Doyle didn’t deserve her sympathy and the only reason she was even considering it was because Franky had wormed her way into Maxine’s life through deceit. This moment of vulnerability that none but Maxine could have noticed? It was most likely for show, too.

She kept watching the younger woman with a hawk‑like gaze as Franky’s lean figure all but attached itself to the diamond mesh fence separating the yard from a staff‑only corridor that Bridget Westfall happened to be passing through on her way to, presumably, her or the governor’s office, fingers clenching around the steel wires. She observed as Miss Westfall slowed her pace down to a halt and as her optimistic smile faltered and her expression changed to one of concern and mild confusion. The woman was evidently unfamiliar with whatever front Franky put up then. No doubt she would unravel her façade soon, though. Maxine herself had joined Miss Westfall for a couple of her group sessions and considered her to be a pleasant breath of fresh air amid a sea of stale, distant animosity that wore only black. She observed as Franky’s eyes darted from side to side and her mouth moved rapidly with words Maxine couldn’t catch but which seemed a whole lot like pleas. (Of course they did.) A nod from Miss Westfall, and – huh – an odd, impulsive, contrastive twitch of her hand towards Franky’s shoulder before Bridget’s brain realized there was a physical barrier between them and well before Franky had a chance to notice for all that attention she devoted only to herself. Maxine sighed, shook her head, and resolved to focus on the score of the game. She didn’t care, anyway.

_Can we talk today?_

No “morning, Gidge!” No “going formal today, huh?”

_Today? I’m sorry, Franky, I’m all booked. But we’re meeting on Thursday, aren’t w—_

_Please. I really—I don’t know what to do, okay? I don’t know how to—Fuck, whatever—Please, just do me a solid, please. I need to talk to you._

Looks exchanged. Pause. That was three. Way too many _please_ s in one utterance from Franky Doyle. A nod from Bridget, and an instinct uncalled for.

_Okay. Stop by after the exercise period._

There was a double entendre hiding somewhere in the fact that Bridget was sacrificing her lunch break to be with Franky which shouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the brunette, but it did. Wrinkles of worry appeared on Bridget’s forehead as Franky closed the door behind her and they found themselves alone, having abandoned the usual playfulness on a midnight train to nowhere. The air in the room was thick and almost hard to speak into.

“What’s the matter?” Bridget asked, maintaining a respectful distance. Somehow it didn’t look like either of them would be sitting down for this particular talk.

“What’s wrong with me?” Franky asked as she leaned back on the door either for support or out of fear someone was going to barge in, or both.

“What are you talking about? Why do you think there’s something wrong with you?”

“Am I—” Franky began but the words got caught in her throat. She shook her head and shook her train of thought off with it. “Booms is real angry with me, okay? And, and, and I don’t know what I did. I can’t remember. I don’t remember doing anything wrong and no one will tell me what I did. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what I bloody did!” she shouted and kicked the wall separating the two of them from the consequences of outside.

Bridget flinched, more for fear of a guard overhearing the thud than anything else. The last thing that would help right now was Franky getting locked away somewhere she couldn’t reach her. She needed to defuse the situation fast. “Franky, breathe. We can deal with this in a constructive manner, okay? But in order for that to happen I’m going to need you to slow down and take it from the top.”

Deciding on a bolder move, Bridget took a slow, resolute step towards the brunette – slow enough to give her enough time to back away if she wanted to, but not to give off an air of insincerity. She placed a hand on Franky’s shoulder and squeezed gently, seeking her eyes with her own, an encouraging smile accompanying her gaze. Again, the same smile that had been present during their first interaction in the slot. The smile that was not a smile at all, but rather a window into something infinite.

_But, Franky, there’s more to it than that._

Franky looked down at the hand on her shoulder as her knees threatened to give in for all the wrong reasons. “It was you,” she said breathlessly, meeting Bridget’s rightfully confused gaze. “Have you been talking to Boomer? Did you somehow—did you tell her anything about what I said?”

_Boomer is just a stupid fat cow with a short fuse that anybody with half a brain can fuck over._

_Short fuse, huh?!_

“I think she misunderstood. Oh, fuck, Gidge. You have to explain! You know I didn’t mean it like that!”

Bridget blinked a hazy memory of Franky talking about Susan Jenkins during their first session into focus. A memory in which Franky expressed a genuine connection to and admiration of another person, undermining herself in the process. As to what that had to do with anything, Bridget was none the wiser. “I’ve told you before: everything that’s said in this room is strictly confidential. I do not and am not allowed to discuss our talks with other inmates. I haven’t even had any private sessions with Susan.”

There was a crack of lightning in the cloudless sky. Franky’s world crashed and burned. Fuck. She had been so stupid, so naïve, fooled by one fucking smile and a nice gesture or two. Jesus fucking Christ. After all she had been through, all of the abuse and betrayal and violence and bullshit, all of that, all of that, _all of it_ undone by a pretty blonde in fancy fucking shoes. And the sound in her ear went _ringadingading_. “Did Ferguson put you up to this?”

“Put me up to—? Franky, I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.” _Ring._

Like a meteor engulfing the Earth in a galactic mass of flames. Occam’s razor pointed right to Bridget Westfall’s finger on the trigger against her temple. Nobody else had heard or known. Nobody else could have turned her best friend against her. Nobody else wanted to, nobody but the person who answered to the governor and whose very _job_ was to _lie_ to them all. _Easily misinterpreted._ Franky felt sick. And in that moment, a wave of hatred immolated her insides and dyed her eyes pitch black. She shoved the blonde violently, sending her stumbling several steps back, rebuilding a layer of concrete walls with armed sentries positioned every 20 meters between them in a single instant. Bridget’s eyes widened as she came face to face with the untamed side of Franky Doyle, awaiting a terrifying fate like a doe in the headlights, willing her body to move in _any way_ but unable to, frozen in place. Scared.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” Franky hissed and stomped out of the office, leaving the door wide open behind her for the next idiot to walk through.

_Ring._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title for this chapter: "The One in Which Jumping to Conclusions Becomes an Olympic Discipline". >:(


	10. Flowering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! This one essentially wrote itself in one sitting, though I'mma be honest with you, it's past 2AM as I upload and I think I saw God a while ago. I really wanted to finish this one today because I've been having a bit of a rough, busy time recently so the chapter reflects this with mentions of bullying and child abuse, if that's something you'd rather avoid.
> 
> Anyway, if you guys want to leave a comment, I will personally fly to your country of residence to deliver a box of chocolates to your door. Hope you enjoy it and thank you for your support, you absolute strawberry muffins. <3

> “God save us, everyone.  
>  We’re a broken people living under loaded gun.  
>  And it can’t be outfought.  
>  It can’t be outdone.  
>  It can’t be outmatched.  
>  It can’t be outrun."

– The Catalyst (Linkin Park)

* * *

 

When Bridget was a little girl, her family’s next-door neighbors had a dog. It was a cocker spaniel named Chip with glossy ginger fur, floppy ears, a bright pink tongue that was quick to show itself in greeting of anyone who came along, and a triangular little nub for a tail that only stopped wagging when Chip was asleep. He lived to be ten years old, as old as Bridget was at the time, before fate sent them both to the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bridget would often play with the neighbor kids – boy and girl, although back then they were content with simply being cowboys and sheriffs, police and thieves, or pirates and the Royal Navy – and spent many nights holding a torch up in their attic listening to horror stories with bated breath when her parents were on one of their business trips to Dubai or Cairo or New Delhi. (Well, they were her father’s business trips, really, but her mother often came along as his plus one, sneaking vacation in a day at a time in place of proper vacation there was never enough time for. One day, when daddy’s firm lands that big trade in Europe or China or Massachusetts, they’d say. Then we will all go on holiday.) Sometimes they would put a carrot on the dog’s head and pretend he was a unicorn (for all of two seconds before Chip shook the offensive vegetable off) and sometimes, when they were still little enough to attempt it, they would pretend he was a glorious steed to be ridden into battle (for maybe one heroic second because Chip would adamantly refuse to move with living baggage on his back).

When Bridget was ten, Chip got sick. A tumor had appeared on one of his hind legs and grown to the size of a tennis ball within a month. The family was given a choice – either put him down right then to prevent more suffering, or let the surgeon attempt to extract the cancerous tissue. Even the X-ray didn’t reveal enough and the doctors couldn’t be sure whether it would be possible to get rid of all of it, or indeed if there would be enough skin left for them to sew the dog back up afterwards. 10% chance he would survive; 90% chance he would not.

But children don’t speak in statistics. They cried and yelled for their best furry friend, refusing to give him up to be taken away without guarantee he would be coming back. If he only survived for two more weeks after that, well, that was two more weeks of fun with him!

It was not fun for Chip. He woke up from surgery with a plastic cone around his neck and all the fur in his groin area missing, along with suture running along the length of his inner thigh. Overnight, he became an idol of suffering. He refused to eat, refused to walk, and his black beady eyes pleaded for passersby to just take that thing off of him so he could lick his wounds. The three children were left alone with him as he cried, unrestrained howls tearing from his throat in hopes somebody would make it all go away. The neighbor kids ran off into the kitchen to get a cold wet towel to hold it against the dog’s leg and soothe the irritation. That’s when Bridget was left behind.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t,” she whispered, her small, boney, shaking hand stroking Chip’s back as he looked her in the eye and whimpered loudly. “I can’t.” Howl. The dog pushed his snout into her lap, his legs twitching with the need for relief.

She couldn’t, but she also couldn’t not.

“Okay. Okay. It’s going to be okay. Just for a little bit, alright? Just hold still. Just for a little bit.” And she reached for his collar and took the cone off.

As soon as the plastic slipped past his ears, the dog buried his nose between his legs and started chewing at the scar that grieved him so. “Wait, no, you can’t—you’ll make it worse!” Bridget shouted to no avail. It was too late, and in a mess of fur and wrinkled pink blistered skin she glimpsed blood trickling down Chip’s leg. “No, no, no, stop! You can’t!” Far too late. Her heart beat fast and loud in her chest as her fingers stretched out towards the collar in an attempt to pull the dog’s head away from the wound before the damage became irreversible.

_Awrrrrrrr!_

And then there were two shades of sunset on the floor. Bridget was holding her hand to her chest, a crimson stain spreading on the striped cotton T-shirt underneath. Chip’s teeth bared and red to the gums with her blood, his nose turned up as he snarled. The fur on his back rising into needles and pins. Apologies spilling over Bridget’s lips like a prayer. He just wanted the pain to stop. People did the same, too, she thought. They all wanted the same in the end. She couldn’t help and wondered whether one day she could, whether one day she would be strong enough. There, lying on the wooden floor, she resolved to become a veterinarian, before announcing to her family she’d be a firefighter instead two months later. _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

She got stitches in her palm, and Chip was put down that evening.

For years Bridget didn’t understand why the neighbors didn’t invite her over anymore. She didn’t understand why the kids started walking in the other direction when she tried to approach, why she began finding her pocket money missing all the time, or why she started hearing the words “Bridge the Bitch” whispered when she passed by her classmates in school. When her former friends grabbed ahold of her to keep her from running, opened the backpack she was carrying on her back, snatched her pencil case and threw it out the 5th floor window yelling “Fetch, Bitch!” she was too stunned to ask why. When she found herself locked inside a bathroom stall at the end of the day, her exit impenetrably barricaded by a hastily assembled stack of cheap wooden chairs, she figured the others were hurting. But the reason, the true reason that started it all years prior? That she didn’t know, despite spending that night asleep on the cold white tiles wondering until the janitor discovered the scene of the crime the next morning. She was already an adult when her parents mentioned casually over dinner as she re-examined the scars on her palm one night that, oh, honey, the dog didn’t die of cancer. We had it put down because it bit you. I still can’t believe how irresponsible the parents were to leave you kids alone with it!

Franky Doyle physically pushing her away in the heavy silence of her office, her arm in a cast and purplish circles under her eyelids – that happened thirty years later. Thirty times the Earth circled the sun before Bridget saw the beady blackness of the dog’s eyes in front of her again. And Franky snarled and growled and she was more than ready to bite. She was in pain. She just wanted the pain to stop. In that moment, she would have ripped Bridget’s skin off and torn her to shreds if it meant the pain would stop. Needles and pins.

_Stay the fuck away from me._

That was what it boiled down to in those situations. You are hurting me. Stay away. Make it stop. And Bridget didn’t know, having long since forgotten, why the only words forming in her brain as she watched Franky run from her were _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_. She stood inside the empty room with the door wide open, exhaling slowly as she let the events of the last few minutes wash over her. Observe first, feel later. A pang of guilt struck her heart without there being sufficient grounds for it. She had clearly not done enough for Franky Doyle, that much was true, but she was innocent in regards to her accusations. Accusations—that she—Ferguson?

Bridget cursed under her breath, allowing her composure to break for a moment of reprieve. That was the piece she had been missing: Governor Ferguson. Ferguson was linked to Franky Doyle’s unstable mental state. Somehow. Bridget hadn’t seen the two of them in the same room since—since the slotting. Actually, no. There was that time she glanced through the glass into the governor’s office and saw them sitting on their respective sides of the playing field, a vestige of titanium opposite a defiant flame suffocating on a lake’s surface. Come to think of it, Ferguson was always hiding behind glass – in the slot, in her office as she observed the inmates in the exercise yard from above, outside the medical unit when Franky was brought in. Hiding in plain sight.

Ferguson had also been the one keeping Bridget on her side of the glass. The question that had eluded Bridget all this time was _why_. She didn’t know then just how soon she would find her answer.

Franky wasted no time, spurred on by the bile rising in her throat. She skipped lunch altogether, banking on the fact that nobody would care enough to notice her absence, and waited for Boomer in the lounge, pacing back and forth to the sound of indistinct chatter in the background discussing cheating boyfriends on the outside, rebelling teenagers, or the need to have more funds forwarded to an inmate’s account for chocolates and ciggies. Everyone wrapped up in their own worlds while Franky was setting her own on fire and watching the grass burn beneath her feet. When Boomer walked through the entrance and saw Franky, the smile that decorated her face as she chatted with Doreen and Maxine along the way dissipated with the snap of a finger.

“You were right. I’m a piece of shit. So come and get some,” Franky snarled, welcoming her with open arms – arm – into an arena she had just invented.

The three newcomers froze in place. Kim Chang turned up around the corner, quickly registering the tension that had pooled just meters away from her.

“I told you not to show your bloody face around me ever again!” Boomer shouted.

“Yeah, you did. But the thing is, I don’t give a shit, Booms. You can’t ever follow through with what you say, can ya? Huh?”

Liz tried to step between the two women, exchanging incredulous looks with them both. “Alright, that’s enough. What is the point of this? I don’t know what happened between you two, but,” she began, staring Franky down, “you need to find a different way to own up. There’s a pregnant woman in the unit, for Christ’s sake!”

She didn’t get to say any more, because then Maxine was dragging her back by the arm. “This doesn’t concern us.”

“Of course it bloody concerns us! We’re supposed to be family! I can’t have you two falling apart on me too—”

“Shut the fuck up, Liz,” Franky spat, never breaking eye contact with Boomer, who was rapidly turning red in the face. “Come on. Come on, you big fat bitch. What are you _fucking waiting for?_ ”

_Crack._

The last one standing. Franky narrowly avoided Boomer’s fist coming fast at her face and sidestepped around her, swiping her foot under Boomer’s to make her trip and fall. Boomer landed with her palms on the ground and quickly recovered, tackling Franky with the roar of one who is losing everything. There were sounds of protest coming from the other women, inaudible over the shuffling and heavy breathing of the fight. Franky yelped as her back hit the wall. Some newbie held her hand over the panic button and was being chastised by Bea Smith, who had hurried over to witness the exchange. Last one standing. Tears stung Franky’s eyelids as she thrust her head forward and her forehead hit Boomer in the nose, sending the taller woman stumbling back. Boomer was crying, too, when her elbow made contact with the side of Franky’s face. People cheering and booing on the sidelines. A fist to her stomach. Franky toppled over.

In the split second before the next strike, the one that precedes one’s life flashing before one’s eyes, Franky looked inside herself, searched far and wide for a spark of sanity that would tell her to stop. To not give up. To keep going even though every step she took felt like ripping shards out of her skin. The spark that would tell her this was not necessary, that she was wrong about everything. _You are safe_ , that’s what she wished to hear. _You are a good person. You don’t deserve this._

She found a voice saying the exact opposite.

The ringing in her ear intensified as Boomer’s weight pinned her to the floor and as the woman pummeled her with her fists. Her mother in her mind. _Why do you think your father left? He doesn’t want you! You’re no good to anyone! Oh, little Francesca’s gonna cry, is that it? Is that how it is, you ungrateful fucking brat? I sacrificed everything for you and this is how you repay me!_ Salty tears that didn’t belong to her dropped on her face like hesitant summer rain. She looked up at Boomer through a drunken haze of her own blood, tasting iron in her mouth. And again her head snapped to the side, and again she turned back to face her undoing. _Oh, don’t mind her, baby. That’s just Francesca. Bring us a bottle, now!_ A hit to her jaw caused her teeth to clamp down on her tongue, tearing into the soft tissue. _Fran—ces—ca, where—are—you…_

The last one standing. She had to be the last one standing so that Booms wouldn’t get into trouble with the screws. Them was the rules. The last one standing reaps the punishment.

Mustering up every last bit of her strength, Franky kneed Boomer in the spine, throwing her off balance just enough to be able to wiggle out of her grip and get back on her feet. She breathed heavily, blood dripping from her mouth in thick, dark clumps – one of which dropped on the drawing of the sun on her cast, creating a sinister shade of orange. She thought she heard Kim Chang yell “Franky!” somewhere behind her. Hah. Kim used to feel soft and warm in her bed, she did, before all this noise. All this static. The high‑pitched, fluctuating tone inside her head.

With one decisive motion, Franky struck Boomer’s larynx, making the other woman succumb to a coughing fit; then she used the opportunity she’d created to deliver a precise jab to the back of Boomer’s head, sending her crumbling to the ground like a stack of cards. Right then, Officers Jackson and Fletcher forced their way through the crowd that had gathered, voicing updates into their walkie-talkies, and before she had time to even consider her surroundings, a strong pair of arms was dragging her away from the unit.

Franky’s mouth twitched in a semblance of a very broken, lopsided smile. She made it. She was the last one standing.

Joan Ferguson opened Franky Doyle’s file on her computer, scrolling down to the “total number of days spent in isolation” field. This information would, regrettably, have to be updated. Things were finally beginning to fall into place.


	11. Spider Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who's stuck around so far! You guys are the best and I would fight several grown emus for each of you. <3
> 
> Be warned as this chapter takes a darker and more graphic turn than usual. I don't think there is a specific warning I should be using, but - maybe consider skipping this one if you're particularly squeamish or struggling with depression. A short summary of the chapter is provided in the end notes.

_“Get caught in my spider dance,_  
_spider dance, spider dance_  
_You know a heart like yours can't stand a chance_  
_Got your marionette strings in my hands.”_

~ Spider Dance (Adriana Figureoa)

* * *

Deputy Governor Vera Bennett’s house was submerged in silence. The dead quiet came in stark contrast to the shrill voice of her bedridden mother that sometimes still echoed softly on the staircase even though… how long had it been, almost a year now? Vera frowned, leaving her black, low spool heel shoes arranged neatly at her front door facing the outside and ready for the next day. She carried the letter she had picked up from her mailbox to the kitchen table and opened the envelope to find a card with a painting of a red rose on it that said “HAVE A PLEASANT EVENING, VERA.” She shook her head and threw the card in the trash, too preoccupied with her thoughts to pay much attention to the latest advance from her secret admirer-slash-stalker. It’s not like the messages were ever invasive, and at least someone out there cared about what kind of day she was having. The day, huh. So odd for her to not even remember the month anymore, let alone the day. Perhaps time really does heal all wounds, even those you were the one to inflict.

God, how loudly that voice used to ring in her ears! Her mother had always been loud in the sense that even if she didn’t speak at a high volume, her words stayed with Vera for hours, days, years, deafening any encouragement she might have gotten. You’re such a disappointment, Vera. Can’t do anything right. Look at yourself! You can’t wear that, sweetie, so why don’t you slip into something more appropriate before you embarrass yourself in front of the boys any further. You’re all I have, Vera. Out with friends? You would abandon your own mother like that?

Even if it was just for a few hours. Even if Vera had her phone on her at all times. Even if it was her birthday, or she had just graduated, or she got invited to a bar by someone new for the first time before they understood that Vera was never, not once in her life, ever going anywhere.

During her life Vera’s mother had been insufferable, but the cancer and her insistence to die at home made her a living nightmare. Vera knew better than many that pain made people revert to their most base, violent selves. Working in an environment where an eye for an eye is a daily item on the menu drove that point home. Even if, at the end of the day, there were no eyes left to go around. Still, despite all the quarrels and riots, fistfights and extortion, she never got used to her mother screaming obscenities at her, calling her useless, reminding her of every single time Vera ventured out of her shell and was met with disdain from her peers. Her mother made sure Vera would never forget about being called _Stinky Pants_ in school, or about that time she was so nervous she threw up on the boy she liked, or about how much mama needed her little girl.

It was Joan Ferguson who finally lifted the veil off Vera’s conscience and made her realize that sometimes, justice lurks neither outside the prison bars or on the inside. Sometimes, justice, like compassion, is hiding within us. So one night Vera filled the syringe that kept her mother sleeping with every remaining dose she had for the month one by one and switched her phone to silent once and for all. It was better for them both that way.

Her house – that’s right, hers, not theirs – was so quiet, in fact, that Vera got in the habit of letting classical music play from her computer’s speakers at nighttime while she cooked for herself. There was an online radio that she had bookmarked and that had become synonymous with home. Joan liked that kind of music, Vera mused with a smile as she dropped a pinch of salt in the water boiling on her stove. People didn’t quite understand her methods sometimes, but Joan only had one goal in life, and it was to rule with an iron but fair hand for the greater good. Whatever she was doing now, she was definitely cooking up ways to work towards that goal in that peculiar mind of hers, Vera thought.

“A midnight date with the Governor herself, huh? A bit disappointed you forgot the candles.”

Franky defaulted back to her snarky exterior with extra bite, but her heart was racing. She had been led out of her cell in isolation and down a series of hallways by an unperturbed Officer Miles. Linda Miles, for her part, didn’t stop to consider why the Governor would want Franky Doyle brought to her in a secluded area of the prison when most of its inhabitants were asleep. She wasn’t racking up gambling money getting involved in prison politics. A little bird had told her, however, that a generous sum would find its way to her bank account within 24 hours if she agreed to take on this flimsy bit of extra responsibility. The less she knew, the better, she convinced herself (it didn’t take much) as she closed the door to the boiler room behind Franky Doyle.

“You really ought to stick with that misguided confidence of yours when you say these things, Francesca. Hesitation looks quite… unbecoming on you.”

Franky had been slotted indefinitely for her assault of Boomer following a lengthy visit to the medical unit. She spent some quality time chewing on a sterile cloth waiting for her tongue to stop bleeding – or at least, stop bleeding profusely – while Nurse Atkins wiped the blood off her face. (Franky had her own two hands, thank you very much, but was quickly reminded that one of those was currently less than usable and the other too busy applying pressure to a bump forming on her head.) And then the stitches. Ugh, the stitches. The puncture wasn’t too bad, and Franky was assured that the mouth was one of the fastest healing parts of the human body, but maybe one or two stitches would speed up the process. Franky would have said something about how Rose was far too eager to get access to her mouth but she really didn’t want the nurse anywhere near her tongue at that moment. Bloody Boomer, packing punches like truck. Then again, Franky deserved it.

“You get off on this on something? Catching women who want nothing to do with ya alone in the middle of the night like Freddy fuckin’ Krueger? Does that make you feel powerful, huh? Are you gonna be flicking your bean to this picture later? Ugh, no, don’t answer that. I ate earlier.”

Her parole was fucked. Not only would she have missed the date – there was no point in staging a hearing for an inmate who had just been slotted for assault. As if that mattered. Franky knew the day would never come the moment she saw Joan Ferguson’s eyes peering at her from the darkness for the first time weeks prior. She had nothing left to protect. Nothing except maybe a semblance of dignity which she fully intended to smear across Ferguson’s face any chance she got. It still hurt to talk – she had a follow-up visit to medical to get the stitches out scheduled for the next day and at least the swelling had gone – but she would be damned if she didn’t bite back.

Ferguson tilted her head to the side as if observing an anomaly within a code. “Would it make you feel better if you hit me?”

“What?”

“Well, physical violence seems to be your solution to any problem, as clearly demonstrated by your confinement in isolation. Now, contrary to what you might believe, I didn’t come here tonight to engage in meaningless banter with you. I came here because you are going to help me with something very important. And if entertaining the animal within is going to let us move past this phase faster, then feel free to charge.”

The distance between them may have been enough to fit a car in but it was not nearly enough for Franky’s survival instinct to stop blaring warning sirens in her brain. She would have needed a skyscraper, a whole block, an ocean to shield her from the penetrating gaze of the shadowy figure standing in the corner. The inconspicuous half-smirk you could only see in your peripheral vision but that was gone long before you locked eyes with her made her look like a floater, an irritating mirage that moved with your gaze so that you could never quite catch it. But floaters appear after you look at bright surfaces, whereas the picture of Joan Ferguson grew more pronounced with each time Franky peered into the darkness. She could see her more clearly after she got beaten up in the showers, after the force of Boomer’s body slammed her chest into the cold tiles lined up the walls of her cell, after Maxine looked into her eyes and saw nothing worth fighting for.

A steady hum of water flowing in the pipes and hoses around them was companion to the array of valves of various sizes, some color-coded, some plain with numbers and code words protruding from the surface, along with the distinct buzz of gas. Despite the room being pristinely clean, a mild whiff of leftover oil tickled Franky’s nostrils. That and whatever perfume Ferguson chose that night – it was subtle and earthy and it made Franky think of daisies growing on top of a grave. An old grave with roots of oil seeping through the ground down towards a body that was hidden long before anyone could see the maggots crawling out of its eye sockets.

“You’re insane,” Franky breathed.

Ferguson cackled. “Your intellectual inferiority prevents you from understanding the world around you, so you become hostile towards it. It’s tragic, really, but hardly attributable to what you perceive as ‘insanity’.”

She emerged from the shadows at the other side of the room and crossed the distance towards Franky in methodical steps – the black queen advancing across the board towards her enemy’s fortress. But it was not her turn. The rules did not permit her to attack outright; not in her game, not right away. In her game, Franky was stalling, waiting to discover the contents of Joan’s hand and the consequences of her play. Silly girl. She would see nothing unless Joan allowed her to. “What is it, Francesca? I can repeat that slowly for you, if you’d like. Or I can begin if that’s what you want. Ah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You are so convinced you deserve all this pain that you can’t bring yourself to throw the first punch anymore.”

Franky grit her teeth as the menacing silhouette towered above her. If only she were a cat so that she could run off into an alley way and shake off her pursuer by hiding behind a dumpster somewhere! In an open space that could have worked since Ferguson’s presence was large and imposing and entirely too self-important to get lost in a fray. Unlike Franky, Ferguson didn’t know how to fit in. She had no interest in doing so. Somewhere in the city Franky could have easily taken a few too many right turns and camouflaged herself, blending into a smudge of lampposts and rainwater until the storm would pass. Not so much in here. Not in Wentworth. Not in a boiler room where she was the sole target of a famished beast stronger than her in terms of both physique and rank who was just playing with her bloody food. Franky had to hold back. Her only chance depended on it. She couldn’t give her what she wanted, couldn’t let her get to—

Tugging at the leather glove covering her hand, Ferguson leaned in closer to whisper: “You’re going to die.”

The storm began to rage.

Franky saw red as her heartbeat accelerated. She let out a vicious war cry as she lunged at the woman in front of her paying no heed to her own injuries, but—why was the world sideways all of a sudden?—then a precise, calculated jab in her ribcage—even without her épée, Joan knew exactly where to strike—and a sidestep and clutch. Franky’s injured arm was easily her weakest spot since she had no reliable way of protecting her left side. Even if she tried to keep her healthy arm in the front and combat-ready, all it took was one step to break down her guard. She was too crass and too emotional to even consider herself an opponent. Of course, Joan counted on the sloppiness of prison fights to take its toll on even the most formidable of inmates. There was no discipline—she grabbed the back of Franky’s neck and kicked her in the knee—no order to their little contests of endurance. None of them fought like the Governor, with purpose and conviction. The way those once‑human creatures fought for their pitiful lives could have resulted in nothing else than Franky Doyle being pinned to the wall coughing up the dust from the valves.

Franky grunted as she struggled to escape the iron grip Ferguson had on her neck, trying to pry her fingers away while Ferguson held her injured arm still against the cold wall, untangled from the confines of the scarf. “Get off me!” she screamed and pushed against Ferguson to try to leverage herself. It was no use. She wasn’t fighting a human, a being of lines and limits. She was held captive by a machine. “Why are you doing this, you sick freak?!”

Ferguson’s voice brushed sweetly against her ear, freezing the blood still in her veins as if it didn’t even come from outside her body. “Because you are right, Francesca. You do deserve this. You know you do. It breaks my heart watching you hurt the people around you time and time again. It breaks yours too, doesn’t it? You wish you could stop being this way but, unfortunately, it’s what you were made to be. A bitter disappointment.”

Franky mustered up all her strength to escape this bear trap but could do nothing. If she happened to strike Ferguson in any way, the taller woman absorbed the force of the hit without so much as a stumble and her fingers only clenched tighter around Franky. The girl whimpered involuntarily—her hands twitching towards the direction of her ears—and then her healthy arm was twisted behind her back.

“Oh no, there’s no easy way out for you. Does the truth make you uncomfortable? Would you prefer not to hear spoken aloud what you believe deep down? That you’re a waste of space? That you only exist to drag down the rest of the pack, like cancer? That nobody would care if you simply… disappeared?”

 _Stop._ One single word, four letters of the alphabet. Just one syllable. It couldn’t have been that difficult to speak. After all, Franky had been managing to get words out of her mouth since the beginning of this encounter. Except in this case, it wasn’t really Ferguson saying these things. It was her voice, her throat that produced the vowels and the consonants, but it was a mere echo of something much closer. Something that couldn’t be stopped. Franky tried – god, how she tried – her tongue neared the roof of her mouth to form the first sibilant, but when it was time to breathe, her lungs betrayed her, providing fuel enough only for a series of huffs.

“That’s what I thought,” Joan cawed victoriously. She released Franky’s arm from her grip, trapped it between their bodies, and ran her hand through short brunette hair almost soothingly – petals on an icescape – before grabbing a fistful of it and yanking Franky’s head back towards her. “See, I just want to help you. You are broken. You are defective. You are one of nature’s unfortunate mistakes, but you don’t have to be.”

The hand that was keeping Franky’s cast-covered, limp arm pinned to the wall made its way to her broken fingers and rested on them, its chilly warmth permeating Franky’s skin despite the obstruction. No.

“You just need to be taught a lesson.”

Ferguson’s curled around the tips of Franky’s, pads pressed to pads. No, no, god no. Oxygen was leaving and entering Franky’s system through shallow, choked breaths as she stared with parted lips at their hands on the wall. She could barely hear the voice chewing its way inside her brain over the familiar, static ringing, and all that echo. No, mama, don’t do it. I’ll be good, I swear I’ll be good.

“No one cares about you anymore.”

No, please, no. I won’t do it again. I’ll do anything. Anything you want, mama, just don’t—

“No one wants you.”

Franky’s lips quivered with hundreds of unspoken pleas. Tears spilled over her eyelids as she sobbed, knowing well that unseemly sounds tearing from her throat only made mama angrier. She was such a terrible, despicable daughter. “Please—don’t—”

With one swift motion, Ferguson yanked Franky’s fingers backwards with brute force bending them at an unnatural angle, her palm crushing the protective cast, bones cracking under the pressure.

_Bridget!_

As Bea Smith lay awake in her bed ruminating over the letters she had received that day, she thought she heard a strange, high-pitched wail in the distance. Could have been a siren. Or a kid throwing a tantrum somewhere far enough from the bustle of the city to not be drowned out by it. Or a rabid dog howling at the moon. This was a moonless night, though. Probably not a dog.

Franky lay curled into a ball rocking back and forth on the ground, unrestrained cries deafening the silence around her. Her body shook as her pain receptors registered what had happened and her muscles twitched involuntarily. Underwater. Pure instinct to swim made her limbs move despite the fact she pressed her face to the ground and willed herself to fall through it and sink. She didn’t think about her cry for help. She didn’t think about anything. It was just words, feelings, words and feelings, feelings and words captured inside a cracked shell. Hurt. Breathe. Dark. Scream. Bridget.

Ferguson knelt next to the shivering bundle drooling on the floor and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. What is wrong with you, she thought. It’s just pain. A simple, basic biological response to let one know the body is struggling to stay alive or will in the future if nothing is done to prevent this outcome. Millenia of evolution have all used the same tactic to get our species to where we are now. A dying animal in pain will exhibit a much stronger sense of self-preservation than one who can feel no such thing. That was the true meaning of the survival of the fittest – survival of the ones who can best understand the needs of their physical vessel and react accordingly. Nature had worked tirelessly to perfect man in this fashion, yet there was Franky Doyle, the pinnacle of creation, breathless and crumbling and so annoyingly loud, and for what? A mere few broken bones. She was imperfect in every way except the one that mattered. She was perfect for Joan. “Miss Westfall? Really? You call for her at a time like this?”

Bridget. She, before. Understood. Blue. B is for Bridget and for blue. Like the ocean. There is no ocean. Let me drown.

“How odd, all things considered. Wasn’t she the first to betray you?”

Bridget. Blue. Betrayed. She told me things. She talked to Boomer. Made her angry. But—

“Wasn’t she the first to break your trust? Didn’t she tell your friend Susan about the – what was it again – _stupid fat cow with a short fuse,_ I believe? Didn’t she? Didn’t she orchestrate your fall down this rabbit hole? Wasn’t that the case, Francesca? Wasn’t _Bridget_ the one who started all this?”

B is for blue and Bridget and betray and break and bleed. Can’t breathe. She is not here now. She was never here. She has not—she used—black. Not blue. Same difference.

“Wasn’t she? Wasn’t it her fault? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Francesca? Wasn’t it all her fault? Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it her fault?”

_It was you._

“ _Yes!_ ”

The admission pierced the night like a lightning bolt. Every doubt, every sinking feeling, every bout of anger, every fit of rage contained in one monosyllabic _yes_. Joan smiled. That’s right. B is for betray. Let’s count the sheep – Smith, Jenkins, Conway, and now Westfall, all safely out of the picture. “There you go. Very good. I’m so proud of you,” she coaxed, caressing Franky’s hair and gently wiping beads of sweat off her forehead.

Franky cradled her arm in the shattered remains of a cast that enveloped it, subconsciously trying to limit the blood flow to her injuries. The ground beneath her was wet and sticky with her tears and snot but all she could do was roll over and inhale, and exhale, and inhale, and exhale, and everything else was a blur. Except—she knew Franky’s exact words. There was a sentence, the first one she brought herself to say upon gazing into those void, empty eyes: “How do you know about that?”

The leather of Joan’s glove slid against the girl’s cheek. “You’d be surprised by how much I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr chapter summary for the people in the back: Vera has a secret admirer/stalker who leaves letters in her mailbox. Back in the prison, Ferguson gets Franky dragged out of the slot in the middle of the night for a light-hearted chat (sic). A struggle ensues and Franky is easily overpowered. Because Ferguson has spent the previous 10 chapters undermining Franky and making her believe that everyone has abandoned her, she easily gets to her by playing on her weaknesses and almost imitating her abusive mother. She ends up re-breaking Franky's fingers. In that moment Franky screams for Bridget and Ferguson uses this opportunity to make Franky believe that Bridget is the one to blame for all this, successfully severing whatever bond there was between them.
> 
> Yikes. :/


	12. Bridget

Mermaids were swimming in the sky. Can’t you see them? They had bright, shiny scales of alabaster and hope. Up and down they went in that S-shaped rhythm animated Disney movies were made of. Mermen, too. And everyone in between. Look, there – all wrapped inside an infinite spiral that led the way to where the wild things are. Julia reached out to the clouds and traced an ‘8’ over them with her finger. Oh, here comes a thought! What if she knew a Bridget? Who knew. Everything was possible in this world. And the thought passed her by, bleeding into a starry night at noon. And the stomping sounds all around her? Those were centaur hooves. They were jealous because they couldn’t touch the mermaids and they fired arrows that always fell short. Majestic creatures all of them, if a little vain. They couldn’t venture outside of the forest, which could be frustrating at times even though they had made the woods their home. The shadows kept them all in, the centaurs and the mermaids and the fairies and the dwarves who never saw sunlight. What is a Bridget? The shadows asked too many questions as they took and whispered and locked us away.

Rubbing her pregnant belly, Doreen looked up from the table where she, Boomer, Bea, and Maxine were playing cards. In the middle of the yard, she saw a young, petite girl stumbling over her own two feet because she was too busy staring upward to look where she was going. “Shit, Julia’s out. I’ve got to take her back to her unit before she hurts herself.”

“Don’t get up, I can take her,” Maxine offered, but Doreen was already up on her feet, having left her cards face down in her place.

“No peeking! I’ll be right back.”

The roots of the forest ran deep into damp soil. Jumping between them – like an electric impulse from neuron to neuron – would have confused the sharpest mind. It was all a big circle, and a leap over there, and a leap right back, left, right, right, straight ahead, left, a floor above or a floor below, was that right to left or left to right to get from where we are to where we need to be? Let’s go back upstairs and try again. Just in time to see her walking past. Hmm, there was something she should know, wasn’t there? Oh, it’s a wisp! Hey, wait up! Can you grant wishes?

Bridget was just about to turn the corner and make her way downstairs to the medical unit – nobody in the blasted place ever let her know in time that an inmate had, for example, not passed a random drug test, and might need help building a support system, so she had to do her own recon – when her path was blocked by a girl in teal who stole a passing glance at her like she just might be the moon. Bridget stopped abruptly so as to not walk into the girl who seemed to be vaguely aware of her presence but not quite focused on what lay in front of her. Instead, her gaze followed nothing in particular without staggering on any angles or edges, her mouth half open in lax-jawed, childlike wonder. The absence of expression made it all the more shocking when Julia’s eyes suddenly locked onto Bridget’s.

“What does the B stand for?”

It wasn’t drugs, Bridget noted in a mental conversation with herself. No, her pupils didn’t directly give away the influence of any substances and her sense of coordination only seemed to be impeded by the fact that this girl brought ‘distracted’ to a whole new level. Best to play along. Oftentimes it was enough just to be the one who understands. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Gingerly, Julia lifted her hand up towards the blonde, whose instincts told her to back away slowly but whose rational self refused to be startled so easily. Then, just when it was about to occur to Bridget that this hand would soon be wrapped around her neck, Julia’s index finger landed on the nametag on Bridget’s chest and tapped on it.

|         _B. Westfall_         |  
| _Forensic psychologist_ |

“In here. What does B stand for?”

Of course, Wentworth and its hierarchies. They all had to be just family names to one another – a symptom of alienation demonstrated perfectly by the initials they had to substitute their real selves for every day. The psychologist was one of the lucky few who got away with _not_ treating her patients’ identities like ancient incantations (in healthy, socially acceptable amounts), and she could never blame one for demanding to exercise that fairytale power over her in return, even if providing it was another matter. If Rumpelstiltskin himself had asked for her name, she would have replied: “You may call me whatever you’d like.” However, she was no princess locked in an ivory tower, and there was nothing stopping her from coming out of hiding. “My name is Bridget, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said, offering a friendly smile. “What’s yours?”

Hmmm. Bones. Blood. Blackbird. Birth. Beginning. Bright light, for a brief moment. “This one saw a naked lady in a field of green,” Julia whispered as if her speaking the words counted as yet another crime. “The shadows come at night. Then the naked lady drowns in them. This one didn’t see, but she heard,” the girl continued, unblinking. “She cried for you in the darkness.”

The hustle of prison life slowed down, drowned out by the girl’s heavy breathing as she looked into the past over Bridget’s shoulder and tapped her fingers nervously on the nametag. Bridget, for her part, didn’t quite know what to do with herself.

“This one is sorry for the pain. She sees her reflection in your eyes. It’s the shadows, look—they come at night and they hold her until the snowdrops bloom. But you will find her, won’t you? This one promises the pain will stop if you do. Will you find her? Will you?”

Doreen’s voice broke the spell that had plunged them into silence. “Julia, honey, you shouldn’t be out here,” she said when she managed to catch her breath from hurrying after the girl, grabbing her arm and gently pulling her away. Then she threw an apologetic smile at the psychologist, who had just released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Geez, I’m sorry if she spooked ya, Miss Westfall. This is Julia. She’s just been released from the slot and that’s always very confusing for her. It takes time for her to readjust. She’s—well—she sees the world a bit differently, but they don’t keep her down in—you know where—because she’s never done anything wrong or anythin’. In here, I mean. She just says things sometimes, gets picked on by the women, and the screws—the officers would rather fill the rooms down there with the ones they actually have to worry about, so she gets slotted instead. She didn’t cause you any trouble, did she?”

Bridget blinked, finally managing to tear her gaze away from the girl. Just as there was madness to logic, there could be logic in madness. There must have been a coherent thought in there somewhere. Or maybe she was trying too hard again to justify the pounding of her heart. Hmph. She flashed Doreen a confident smile. “No, no. No trouble at all.”

“Good, good. Come on, sweetie, let’s get you back to your unit. I want to hear all about what the crows told you out there. They must have missed ya heaps!”

As she was led away deeper into the woods by the nymph holding her hand, Julia looked over her shoulder to see the psychologist watching her. There was not enough time. Had she done something wrong? Probably, since the wisps had taken her away and closer to darkness before. Now that she was back on the surface, her eyes searched for light with aggressive urgency. It was too far. Too far for things to change. Too far for the naked lady. No, no, that wouldn’t do. She could grant wishes, this wisp could. “Will you find her? Will you find her, Bridget?”

Bridget felt her lips move before she could even begin to understand what she was promising. “I’ll try.” And just like that the two were gone and the shuffling of feet and insults yelled over a basket of dirty sheets filled the airspace around her again. Wonder what that was all about.

Bridget had not been told about how days prior, Franky Doyle had been rushed to a hospital because the prison lacked the equipment necessary to determine the extent of the damage to her hand. She had not been told about how Franky was found curled into a ball on the floor of her cell in the morning with shattered pieces of her cast strewn about following “another temper tantrum”. Not even when she approached the governor and asked for permission to see Doyle, again (“Her parole fell through because of this. I trust a woman in your position can understand the need to mitigate the negative impact this can have on her mental state, Governor.” – “With all due respect, Miss Westfall, Doyle’s mental state has been anything _but_ improving since you started working with her. You will forgive me if I fail to deem your professional opinion in any way relevant under the circumstances.”). She had not been told about the fact Franky needed surgery to fix the comminuted fractures (“What even is the point of doing all this work aligning bones of crims who will get right back to acting like dumb animals the second they’re out the door,” the surgeon’s assistant grumbled in the changing room afterwards.), or about how Franky, once conscious, mentioned she had been hearing a persistent noise in her left ear, or about the tests that came after.

“It’s called tinnitus,” an otologist explained following a series of examinations which involved sticking metal utensils in Franky’s ears and having her listen to a cacophony of buzzing sounds that all seemed just a bit farther away than the frequency she had become painfully aware of constantly, all the time. “There are three main causes for it: loud music, bad posture, and excessive stress.”

Bridget couldn’t have seen the way Franky’s shoulders slumped when the doctor uttered the words _no cure_. “Wh—what do you mean there’s no cure?”

“Not much is known about the condition at this time, I’m afraid. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has the potential to have a positive effect, but it would require you to spend two hours in a hyperbaric chamber with other patients every day for several weeks. There is no chance the prison would authorize a leave like this for someone with your criminal record. You do, of course, have the right to dispute this with the authorities, but the truth is that even if you did undergo the treatment, your chances of healing are extremely slim. In general, once tinnitus develops, it is unlikely to ever disappear.”

Bridget didn’t know how every day since then, Franky woke up in her cell thinking, this isn’t that bad. It’s just a sound. Just noise. It’s not hurting me. I’m okay. I’m okay.

How every day after hours of repeating to herself that she was okay, Franky found herself missing silence, realizing she would never hear the emptiness of it again. She would never again hear the calm of her breath overlapping with a car honking in the distance, tires screeching against asphalt, songbirds chirping overhead, and the rustle of salty waves. Not without a steady hum to her left throwing it all out of balance that she couldn’t block out. She would never again be free to delve into the crevices of her mind without finding the hum lurking in every corner. From the moment she opened her eyes to the second of twilight between awareness and sleep, her world would never again be quiet. And Bridget didn’t know, couldn’t have known that every day, once the realization sank too deep into her skin, Franky would scream, kicking her bed and throwing herself against the wall because _shut up, shut up, shut up!_

She would be led into the lion’s den every night after that where she would, for a while, forget all about silence. Stuck in a room where time, gravity, and matter ceased to exist and where she knew only Joan, her punishment, her fallen angel. In that room she meant something. Useless. Broken. Defective. But she didn’t have to be, Joan reminded her every time she dragged a blade across her thigh where no one could see, drawing a hiss out of the girl. If she just accepted Joan’s help and listened to her, she wouldn’t have to be a failure. If she just sat still and let herself become stronger, she wouldn’t have to keep coming back for more. When she didn’t scream and when she didn’t cry, she was rewarded by Joan cleaning the cuts and embracing her shaking body in the darkness. “That’s it. You’re wonderful. Now rest,” she would say as she stroked her hair. When Francesca broke and disappointed her again, what followed was salt and fingernails wrapped in latex in her flesh.

Then she would wake up in the morning. This isn’t that bad. It’s just a sound. Just pain. It’s not hurting me. I’m okay.

And Bridget knew nothing about it, mulling over the mysterious message in her thoughts between meals instead.

_Will you find her? Will you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise Bridget is onto something here guys, I swear it. It's almost happening. She just needs a little more time.
> 
> Let me know if you think this story is worth continuing. I feel like with the canon events of season 6, Fridget isn't really "in" anymore for many. I love being in this world and I love Franky and Bridget, but summer school and then uni in general are about to start soon for me, at which point I will have life to worry about again. I know the story has been progressing rather slowly (this burn is so slow sometimes I wonder whether I remembered to light the fire) and at this rate, I'm not gonna lie, it's going to take many more chapters to finish. But if at least someone out there draws enjoyment out of it, I will do my very best, like no one ever did. /Pokémon theme plays in the background


	13. Hurricane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE!!! that the rating has been bumped up to M as of this chapter and it's NOT for the reason we're rooting for. The fic now has a rape/non-con warning added specifically because of this chapter. I repeat this chapter is very much the reason we now have a rape/non-con warning. I don't think I can dignify this one with a summary at the end so just... take care of yourselves, lovelies.

> “Calling moon and moon  
>  Shoot that big bad hand  
>  It’ll drag me to your door  
>  And I won’t see you no more  
>  I won’t see you no more.”

– Moon and Moon (Bat for Lashes)

* * *

“Get out.”

Freeze. Bridget Westfall in the dusk of an empty canteen, surrounded by empty chairs at empty tables. Franky was standing in her line of sight but not exactly in front of her – she had been tasked with cleaning up the place after dinner and lifting the grey plastic chairs on top of the tables to make room for a mop later. Despite her injury, she had asked to switch with Liz’s daughter Sophie for cleaning duty. She could do it, one hand or two. She could do at least that now that she was no longer allowed or able to serve the food. Officer Jackson chastised himself mentally for falling prey to her sweet pleas and childish antics when she asked him for the switch and he shook his head as he sent her off, his pen scratching over the name _Birdsworth_ and writing _Doyle_ instead on a sheet of paper to be taped behind a glass pane (on a line that already had his signature on it). He had accompanied her to the hospital, was the one to lock the handcuffs around her wrist and the side of her bed. Not that he trusted her, not in the slightest. But after seeing her unconscious in those sheets – again – watching the neon green line skyrocket with every beep announcing she was still alive… well. For all her misdemeanors, her rough attitude, and her penchant for violence, Franky Doyle was a proud woman. To deny her the dignity of pretending that none of it ever happened, if only in her mind, was a punishment too severe for him to inflict. It couldn’t be helped. He had been harsh and uncompromising one too many times in his life to not understand the consequences of rigid laws. If an incident happened as a result of his goodwill, well, then he would know who Francesca Doyle truly was. Not before.

And so it came to pass that Franky got to stand in the canteen with her hoodie tied around her waist, her healthy arm sore from repeating the same motions over and over, alone until a certain blonde psychologist followed her trail inside. How Bridget got there was another story altogether.

Bridget Westfall refused to let herself be defined by events in her life. She decided not to become a vet if her only motivation to do so was the death of one dog whose fang marks she bore to this day. She decided not to become a firefighter because the only reason the idea occurred to her in the first place was because she watched a house in her neighborhood burn down and heard the cries of an infant she couldn’t see through the flames. She resolved not to pursue a career in mechanical engineering if her only impetus was the desire to find out how exactly the forces of physics and chemistry aligned for the car her father was driving to combust on impact.

Refusal to be shaped by the world that pushed her was what drove her. She sought something more general – a catch‑all for all the times she had failed herself. She never wanted to be wrong twice. Her adamant nature carried with it its own drawbacks as it left her wandering aimlessly through life searching for the right question rather than an answer. Then it clicked, and she saw herself applying for a degree programme in psychology, the art of finding oneself in a room full of mirrors. The art of defiance. There she could learn how to stand tall against the tides and teach others to do the same so that nobody would have to be swept away. She could face the waves, feel their cold touch on her skin and the pull that retrieved stolen seashells from the sand, but at the end of the day, she would walk away from them in any direction she pleased.

Bridget didn’t fill in that application form because of _him_. She just didn’t, no matter how many times her mother insisted that honey, you don’t have to be like one of _those_ people with their profound interest in the unpredictable flux of the human mind and copies of _Jane Eyre_ on their nightstand. There are so many more important, influential careers available to you. Bridget understood – like any parent, her mother wanted her to choose wisely and live the best life she never had. Regardless of her intentions, though, it always came down to the same bullshit narrative – the idea that Bridget was trying to fix herself by fixing others, even if she set her goal ages (in young adult terms) before she was pushed there. What happened to you was terrible but you have to move past it, sweetie. People are animals; they always have been and they always will be and you either deal with it or you don’t. That’s all there is to it. Do you know how much money there is in, say, law?

The conversation would invariably stall at that point. Bridget had not been a psychologist yet and didn’t know how to stop remembering then. Her mind would wander back to the boy, how sweet he had been, how as a young and impressionable lady, Bridget did her best to suppress her true nature and find herself a nice man. Of all the things she wished to forget about him, the only one she had been failing to recall for decades now was his name. Her memories never repressed _properly_ and instead she’d find herself forgetting what she had for lunch or what day she was supposed to meet a friend. Maybe she had exaggerated things to forget something so tangible, she didn’t know. But she remembered how his eyes lit up every time she walked in the classroom, how he made her laugh making silly faces with straws up his nose, how she blushed when he held the door open for her, how he brought flowers to her door after she’d suggested in a low voice: “Hey, want to go to the movies sometime?” How her mother wasn’t home, and the words he said to her when she said _it’s too soon_ and he held her hands above her head as he thrust into her on her own bed, one she would have to sleep in until she finally moved out to live on campus:

_You owe me this much._

She remembered they’d had caramel popcorn that night. She remembered soaking her sheets under lukewarm water so that the blood wouldn’t leave stains because mother would have killed her, and throwing up in the toilet bowl. She remembered sitting on the floor of the shower for a good hour watching the blood circle in spirals around the drain and picking his skin from underneath her fingernails. To the day she saw Franky Doyle in the dim light that flowed into the empty canteen through glass doors, she could never stomach the taste of caramel again.

Bridget Westfall was a psychologist by choice, not because of some inane human need to rationalize a chaotic and confusing universe. And like many professionals, she too could be crap at following her own teachings. No matter where you look, you will eventually find the same people across the board – the smoking doctor, the broke financial advisor, or the abusive cop. Like them, Bridget knew the minute details of her art. She knew humans formed emotional bonds with much greater ease if they confided in one another, revealed intimate contours of their inner selves, if they looked into one another’s eyes long enough. She also knew that emotional bonds were the bane of professional relationships, had read countless essays on the topic of inappropriate patient‑therapist communication and countertransference.

Despite all that knowledge – despite Work Bridget’s nagging voice at the back of her mind bickering with her and telling her to just let it go – her head snapped up from the newspaper one morning in the staff room when she heard Officer Fletcher’s disgruntled mumbling, no doubt part of his daily complaint routine to Will Jackson.

“Nah mate, can’t go. I’m on Doyle duty today.”

Before attracting attention to herself, Bridget took a second to school her features. “’Doyle duty?’ There’s one I haven’t heard before. Care to share with the class?”

Fletcher turned to her as he closed his locker and made his way over to the coffee machine to make himself a hot one because he sure as hell wasn’t grabbing a cold one anytime soon. “Ferguson’s got us doing extra hours to patrol the slot. She’s not gonna say it, but we all know it’s just to make sure Doyle doesn’t do anything stupid and get herself a ticket to the hospital again. Hence, _Doyle duty_.”

A cold shiver ran through Bridget’s body and made the hairs on her arms stand underneath her blouse. “’Again’? Why do I feel like I’m missing something here?”

Fletcher shot her a puzzled look, cradling a mug in his hands as he leaned back on the counter. “We found Doyle in her cell with multiple bone fractures. She’d shattered the damn cast for whatever reason, pissed off that she landed herself back in I’d wager. There was no way to tell how many hours she’d been like that so Ferguson went _off_. That was, uh, Wednesday last week, I think. Nobody told you? If I didn’t know any better I would’ve thought the patrols were your idea. Then again that would imply that the governor gives a flying fuck about what someone else thinks, so yeah, sounds about right,” he remarked as he tore open a packet of sugar.

No. Nobody told her. She wasn’t invited to any staff meetings besides the routine morning briefing. And while Bridget didn’t know why, she was beginning to understand that taking this up with the governor would have been a moot effort. Clearly her presence anywhere near Franky Doyle was deemed undesirable, as was her knowledge of the woman’s mere existence. She could take this to the board under the claim that Governor Ferguson was actively preventing her from doing her job. She could make a good case for herself knowing that she was assigned to Wentworth specifically to help prevent any violent occurrences in the future. However… she could sooner sign her own obituary before directly opposing the governor. Or Franky Doyle’s.

Still, dropping all interest in Franky Doyle all of a sudden would have been far too suspicious to someone of Ferguson’s caliber, so Bridget made sure to throw one more question about when the woman was expected to return to General into the mix. As expected, her concerns were immediately brushed off, and she calmed the spark in her eyes that kept whispering: _I know what you’re doing._ Ferugson’s gaze dug into her back as she walked away.

She checked who was on duty and where that Wednesday morning. Will Jackson. Bridget wasn’t big on favors, the who owed what to whom and for how long. But she had discussed Will’s unprocessed grief over his wife’s death with him before (treating the staff wasn’t in her job description, but surely _amicable chatting_ in her office was perfectly permissible) and pegged him as a man with a sensible moral compass. He sought justice – so did she.

He filled her in on the details without question. Found her in the morning. She needed surgery. I was assigned to keep an eye on her. Took all bloody day – they were running some tests besides the hand. Whatever she does or doesn’t have she wasn’t prescribed any medication or special treatment for it, and that’s all the prison cares about.

“You really think she did that to herself?”

“Well, how else would it happen in there?”

How else, indeed.

He promised to inform her when Franky was released back into General, and he did, and he was the one to tell her where Franky would be that evening just in case she happened to be interested in that sort of information, with an implied _I hope you know what you’re doing_. And so Bridget Westfall found herself far from the madding crowd alongside Franky Doyle, who looked at her like she was poison.

“Get out.”

Bridget raised her hands slightly, palms open – no weapons, no desire to fight or hurt, vital organs exposed. “I’d like to have a word with you, that’s all.”

“Get. The fuck. Out,” Franky spat and her eyes made sure that the anger hidden by a humorless smile was evident. Her features were hard and uncompromising and her fingers clenched around the edge of the table she chose to lean on. In front of her she saw a woman responsible for pain that haunted her during the few hours of sleep she could afford, responsible for the noise that rang ceaselessly in her brain and the years of solitude that awaited her. The distance between them, both physical and hierarchical, shouldn’t have stopped her. She should have enjoyed that one last taste of freedom and punched Bridget Westfall’s fucking face in the second the door closed behind those noisy little heels of hers.

Yet her legs didn’t move. Somehow, for some reason, she was still waiting. After all those years of standing by her bedroom window, Franky Doyle was still fucking waiting.

Bridget’s eyes glimpsed the top of Franky’s arm tattoo peeking out from behind the scarf tied around her neck. Patches of deep green ink coated the side of her shoulder like tiger stripes around the top half of a female body with the breasts on full display. Surrounding the figure was a set of three flower petals. _A naked lady in a field of green._ They didn’t have time for this anymore. “I just want to help you, Franky.”

_I just want to help you._

Franky felt her windpipe constrict. She could smell Ferguson’s breath and hear her voice whisper in her ear. Her lungs threatened to collapse under the weight of all those infinite minutes spent listening to that voice. “Stay away,” she choked, backing away until her back hit a solid barrier. There was a loud bang as one of the chairs stacked on top of a table fell off and clattered off the ground. “Stay away from me!” Her vision went blurry and the shapes and borders of objects began to melt into one while ragged, strained sobs tore from her throat. With every loud exhale she felt a part of herself forcibly escape her body until she was sliding down against the wall numb, bare and fleshless, there but not at all. Her fingers searched the floor desperately looking for something, anything that she could bury herself in and hide because her mouth could no longer form the words she struggled to speak, _stay away, get away, stay away from me,_ for lack of oxygen. A fuzzy figure in front of her approached rapidly and Franky shuffled on the ground, grasping at her neck. It could have been anyone. It could have been no one. Everyone in the world was Joan Ferguson, whose sharp fingernails were ripping the skin off her bones. _Stay away! Get away from me!_ Ferguson’s hands around her throat. Ferguson’s boot in her stomach. Ferguson fastening the noose.

Bridget hurried over and fell to her knees in front of Franky, whose limbs were stuck in one long spasmodic episode. _What changed?_ “Franky, look at me. You’re having a panic attack. It’s me, it’s Bridget. Look at me. I’m not going to hurt you. We’ll get you through this, okay? I need you to breathe the way I am. You can do it. You know how to do it. Just follow my lead and breathe, okay?” she said firmly and reached out for Franky’s hand. The younger woman inched away on impulse but Bridget persisted, guiding Franky’s hand to her ribcage and holding it still against her chest. “Breathe.”

Those were not Ferguson’s hands. They were… smaller. And softer, somehow. They were hands unblemished by violence. Clean of dry blood. Hands that had not grown stiff from holding on too tightly. Hands that never knew the sharp edge of broken glass or the penetrating sting of a burning flame. Franky felt the rhythmic rise and fall underneath her fingertips that divided her world into timed segments again. She rose with it, and stumbled, couldn’t keep up, had to keep running, but the rhythm never faltered, gave her ample opportunity to try again. Rise… and fall. Rise… and fall.

“That’s it. Just keep looking at me.”

Those were not Ferguson’s eyes. They met her halfway, not behind the corner. And they shone bright instead of consuming all light that fell upon them. The calm ocean waves within ferried her safely to the shore.

“Can you tell me the name of this place?”

Franky blinked as Bridget’s face came back into focus. She swallowed the dryness in her mouth and clutched lightly at the woman’s elegantly ironed blouse. “Um—Went—,” she squeaked and immediately cleared her throat. “Wentworth.”

“Right. What state are we in right now?” Bridget asked again, the first question that came to mind whose answer would reaffirm Franky’s location in space and time and ground the frightened spirit inside her.

“Vic—Victoria.”

“Uh-hum. What’s my name?” This was a trick question. Franky could remember, or she could find her last name on the nametag next to where Franky’s hand felt Bridget’s beating heart—both would serve the purpose just fine.

“Bridget. I mean, Westfall. Bridget Westfall.”

Bridget smiled. “Right. Can you name five colors you see around you?”

The metal chair legs. “Silver.” The sickly pale tabletops. “Lime.” The brand new trays. “White.” Bridget’s lipstick. “Pink, and, um—” Bridget’s eyes, iridescent waves over pebbles sanded round. “Blue.”

Franky noticed she was breathing again.

Bridget found her place collapsing unceremoniously against the wall by Franky’s side. Neither spoke for long minutes. In silence they reveled in the biologically contingent act of occupying space that would have been empty without them. It was a reminder that one’s existence, no matter the shape of it, was never a display of defiance. It was simply the way of things. So they existed, side by side, the way they were born to be.

“You don’t have to talk. It can be just me,” Bridget finally ventured. “About anything. Did you know that the use of sonars in naval exercises can cause whales to beach themselves? They talked about it on TV the other day. They get confused, they injure themselves, and because they are social animals the whole group follows suit. They get to rest and heal in shallow waters without realizing they might never make it back underwater. Which is sad but ultimately understandable. The scary part is that some of the animals that end up stranded were perfectly healthy before.

“Shit, sorry. This is the part where I’m supposed to say something positive and shower you with clichés. I forgot my script in my other pants.”

“Your improvisation skills could use a bit of practice. Talk about deviating from the source material,” Franky remarked with a defeated chuckle without lifting her gaze from the floor. “You just don’t get it, Gidge.”

“You’re right, I don’t. I don’t think I understand much of anything in my life anymore. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.”

“You’re not one of us. You’re a psych. You have a professional obligation to keep our shit together, that’s all. So just… stay on that side of the equation.”

Bridget waited. She didn’t respond and she waited until her silence was noted and Franky turned towards her in anticipation of a retort or complaint or a confession. She waited until that moment, when she was sure Franky’s eyes were on her, to unpin the nametag from her chest. She flipped it around in her hand and considered that glaring little summary of her. _Forensic psychologist_. Then she waved her hand and threw the plastic rectangle away, listening to it slide across the floor into shadow. “Fuck the labels,” she said, wrinkles springing from the corners of her eyes to accompany her smile. “I’m on your side, Franky, wherever that is.”

Bridget Westfall made mistakes. Grave mistakes, sometimes. Of course, she never knew about them until the consequences reared their ugly head. It’s not a mistake if you’re aware you are encouraging a negative outcome – then it can be sacrifice, or sabotage. Sacrifice and sabotage she could comprehend, dissect, and commit to. Mistakes, those were something that happened to her. She was the agent of a future that would never come to pass, replaced by an echo of alternate universes. Bridget had just made a mistake.

In her imagination this would have been the moment Franky saw her intentions. It would have been the moment they reached a mutual understanding and agreed to walk away from that tide. She wasn’t sitting there on the canteen floor as the prison psychologist appointed by men in fancy suits who had never seen the people they made decisions about – lord knows she had hung that coat on a nail long ago. She was Bridget Westfall, and instead she got stuck on a battlefield. She was so busy gauging Franky’s trust in her that she never stopped to consider whether she trusted Franky. The problem was, she did.

Suddenly there were fingers clutching at her shirt pulling her forcefully on her feet by the collar. The back of her head hit the wall. Franky’s injured arm was pressed flat against her neck. There was that darkness in her eyes again, coupled with a distant glimpse of death sharpening his scythe. Bridget was trying to pry away the arm that was choking her although a mere few seconds ago she was floating in a relaxed haze and didn’t quite catch the transition. It was no use. She lacked the firm footing and momentum to free herself, and the moment had passed.

“What are you—”

The words got caught in her throat when she felt Franky’s healthy hand tug violently at the front of her blouse, ripping off several buttons in the process. “That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?” Franky spat, her face inches from Bridget’s. “You want me to fuck you, huh? Is that it? Let’s get this over with then,” she hissed, palming the blonde’s breast roughly over the fabric separating them.

“Franky—”

She was silenced by Franky’s mouth on her own, but there was no passion in the kiss. There was only violence, the bitter sting of poison, and unhinged yearning for control, and Bridget couldn’t run or scream because of the fingernails digging into her jaw, and all the muffled sounds she managed were devoured whole before they had a chance to alert anyone.

“Isn’t this what you came for? _Isn’t it?!_ ”

A fool she had been. A bloody fool. Just as she had predicted, Franky would bark and bite and rip her skin off and tear her to shreds. She had known this. She had told herself she knew this. She walked into it anyway, wandered with purpose right into the darkness in those eyes. This was all her fault. It was all her fault, like it had always been, and she didn’t know why she was suddenly crying for her own damn self, why the tears left burning trails on her cheeks, but she tasted the salt on her lips and her senses went into overdrive as Franky’s mouth latched onto the base of her neck leaving teeth marks on her skin. It was her turn to brace herself and shove the younger woman away with righteous fury.

_“Franky, stop it!”_

It was real life.

It was real life and Franky was there stumbling backwards as Bridget leapt away from her like she was molten lava searing her skin. All that rage, all that disgust and resentment evaporated from her clouded mind in an instant when she was confronted with her handiwork: a look she could never have imagined on Bridget Westfall’s face. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought this was a different person. Almost like looking into a mirror. Traces of tears glistened on the woman’s cheeks gone pale with fear, but her eyes betrayed an emotion ingrained deep within her heart, one that clashed with everything Bridget meant in Franky’s world and shattered the mosaic it was painted on. One that wasn’t supposed to exist like that. Wrath. _Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned._ And Franky felt a sudden urge to vomit as realization slapped her across the face.

She did this.

She stood on the spot stunned into silence wanting nothing more than to cower before that life‑defining behemoth of hatred that threatened to consume her. Yet she couldn’t look away, couldn’t tear her gaze from the flame. Couldn’t speak. There was nothing to say.

“This isn’t you,” Bridget said, her voice shaking as she struggled to calm her rapidly beating heart, her hair disheveled from the fight. “Tell me,” she demanded when there was no response. She shook her head in disbelief at the fragility of her foundations and fresh tears spilled over her eyelids. “Tell me this isn’t you!”

Tell me I didn’t make a mistake. Tell me I wasn’t wrong twice.

Franky’s lungs refused to expand at all. She stared wide‑eyed at the woman, not daring to move an inch. “I—” she began and had to stop talking immediately and focus on the spot between her eyebrows where she could feel herself breaking as if she had the _slightest_ right to do so. “I don’t know.”

“Then _lie to me, Franky!_ ”

She brought her quivering hand to her mouth, perhaps hoping to stifle her own sob. I didn’t mean to? I didn’t know what I was doing? I wasn’t trying to hurt you? She couldn’t even feed that bullshit to herself. “I don’t—I don’t know. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whined and bit down on her thumb. “I’m so sorry.”

Most things in life you can walk away from. You can bury them. You can lock them in a box and throw the key down a river. But some things – some mistakes – you can’t rewind. Bridget’s arms were crossed protectively over her chest. She wiped the tears from her eyes and when she lifted her head again her stare was accompanied by an arctic coldness that chilled to the bone, her chin tilted upwards in defiance. The duality of woman… care and indifference. Tenderness and rough. Franky had unchained a beast she didn’t know existed. One might call that a mistake.

“I’m sorry too,” Bridget said, never tearing her gaze away from the brunette as she moved past her and staggered backwards out the door.

Franky’s body wouldn’t move. She couldn’t collapse, she couldn’t speak, and she sure as hell couldn’t run after her, now or ever again. As she stared at the palm of her hand and her twitching fingers, she conjured a mental image of chopping them off with a machete. Her mind was full of jumbled words for very different reasons than before. Beached whales. Drag the rest along. Drag them down. Drown. And maybe, maybe there really used to be one person on the shore who tried to help. Maybe she’d had hope – and crushed it with her own two hands.

Her knees finally gave in to the pressure. She crumbled and emptied the contents of her stomach on the ground, bile stinging the back of her throat. Through ragged breaths she retched again, but it was still in her. The unforgivable impulse that had taken over her – it was still inside her. At least she hadn’t mopped the floor yet. Really? That’s what you think now? What else is there? Nothing. She made sure of that.

The faint smell of vomit invaded Joan’s nostrils when she came in at night to inspect the scene of the crime. They had asked for time together so she had given it to them. These foolish creatures, they never know what they want. How easily reconciliation could slip into madness, how short the distance from love to hate! Emotions all clustered in such small, stifling spaces. No wonder it could be difficult for people to lose track of where they stood. They were not at fault. They simply lacked the mental aptitude to adapt and overcome. That was alright. Joan knew what they needed. She had made sure Franky Doyle understood, in her limited, volatile way, who was truly to blame. She raised an eyebrow as she noticed the moonlight reflected off a plastic rectangle in the corner of the room.

Well, it was safe to assume that Miss Westfall wouldn’t pose a threat anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was overwhelmed by the response I got for the last chapter and I just want to thank you all for your support. This is probably the longest chapter I've written to date because I didn't want to brush this theme off too quickly. I can only hope I did it justice.
> 
> If you're reading this, thank you so much for sticking with me despite the horrible things I do. I keep saying things have to get worse before they get better. (That's how I fall asleep at night, anyway.) 
> 
> Don't forget there is always light at the end of the tunnel, even if you may not see it yet.


	14. Crossroads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <Adele voice> Hello! It's me (again). After the events of the last chapter there is an urgent need for some serious damage control. Thank you so much for reading, I pinky promise the world will not end in fire, and if you leave a comment I will personally name a star after you. (I mean, nobody will ever know about it but I will.) Love you guys. *smooch*
> 
> I call this one "The One Where Too Much Fucking Dialogue Happens". Hope I don't bore you to death. (Also, let's just collectively pretend nametags are a Wentworth thing, ok? Ok.) ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

> “We played hide and seek in waterfalls  
>  We were younger, we were younger
> 
> Someday we will foresee obstacles  
>  Through the blizzard, through the blizzard”

– Obstacles (Syd Matters)

* * *

 

The list of rules Bridget Westfall broke for Franky Doyle just wouldn’t stop growing. Something as simple as letting herself be addressed by her given name had paved the way for extra sessions and unauthorized contact and fans of the slippery slope fallacy would have had a field day with her decisions. Not that she needed them. She was perfectly capable of digging her own argumentative grave for herself, thank you very much. Not drinking alone – that was just another rule that she threw down the garbage chute that night.

She had needed someone to tell her back then that if she did this, there would be consequences. That she would end up with a target on her forehead and then she’d be attacked and she would die and the prison would explode and the apocalypse would wipe them all off the face of the earth. No one had told her any such thing. Then again, who was she kidding. She would have just brushed them off with a polite smile and an air of somewhat irritating confidence. She would have said: “And when pigs start flying I’ll be more than happy to buy you a drink.”

Another rule bit the dust as she poured herself another Scotch. The liquid left a burning trail on the inside of her throat and its traces stung the roof of her mouth when she exhaled, staring at the reflection of her kitchen light stretched out into grotesque shapes in the glass. The booze tasted absolutely nothing like caramel. She took another swig to burn the sugary sweetness away. The door was locked, the blinds were shut, and she had swapped her nightgown for cotton pajamas. Countless times she had said the same thing, explained how difficult it could be for victims of abuse to escape from their situation because they were conditioned to believe that they didn’t deserve any better. She had described how the abused would make excuses for their abuser to rationalize their aggressive behavior and convince themselves they were loved the only way they knew how to be loved. Her fist clenched on the counter. She knew the theory, all of it. All about how once trapped in that situation, victims of violence inflicted by the people they care about may subconsciously seek similarly violent counterparts.

Christ, Bridget. Abuse is a strong word not to be taken lightly. The thought of it, those two short syllables, threatened to nestle in her chest like a heretic’s. Bridget tried to evict it. Franky Doyle was no abuser. There was a whole set of unknown external circumstances that had pushed her, there was trauma, there was something going on and—

And Bridget was proving her own fucking point.

She sent the empty glass sliding across the counter with what was clearly more force than she anticipated because the glass tipped over the edge of the sink and a piece of it the size of her palm broke off with a resounding clank. Shit. Better not touch that now. I said no, Bridget, we’re not going to touch that. We’re going to get up and go to bed. No touching. She got off the bar stool she’d been sitting on and her surroundings all tilted a good 30 degrees to the right. Bridget blinked slowly (one of her eyelids was slightly quicker than the other), her arms hovering at her sides searching for balance. There was a line in there somewhere between understanding and setting herself on fire but she couldn’t quite make out where it began and where it ended. All she could see was Franky Doyle teetering on that tightrope, unsure where she would fall. She pointed an accusatory finger at the blurred figure as she stumbled forwards. “I’ll shhhow you,” she slurred and kept walking toward that line so far away. “Which ssside’re you on? Huh? Rillme that!”

The lamp in the corner of her living room offered no response. But the line—it was there, if she could only see it clearly. Then things would make sense again. It can’t be that difficult. Black or white, light or dark, warm or cold, on or off, yes or no, right or wrong, they’re binary fucking questions. 0 or 1. The answer was out there but her head was heavy, so heavy, and it weighed her down and she stumbled in an uneven semicircle towards her couch, crashing down into the softness of it. She could still see that blurred line in the distance as she surrendered to the blissful release of drunken sleep.

In the morning she hid the bags under her eyes underneath a thick layer of concealer, her uncertainty with mascara, and marched right back into Wentworth. Time passed a lot faster now that she had a proper mystery to agonize over. Not a word of what was said during the morning briefing stayed in her short-term memory. She participated in her daily interactions on autopilot, asking questions and responding with greetings to the right people at the right time as these variables corresponded to what she had always done. Morning, Linda, hi, yes two sugars please, Matt. Governor. See you in my office, Will? As if any of it mattered. They’ll always blame her. She’ll always blame herself.

The next time she stopped to consider the moment she was sitting in her office with a cup of coffee in her hand and Will Jackson in the other sickly yellow armchair. The one where Franky Doyle always—nevermind. He was talking about how he can’t bring a woman to his house, even though he fancies one now (there was a name and Bridget felt like she knew a Rose in the two whole seconds her brain was honestly trying to process the information before giving up), because he was just, well, it’s stupid to say it out loud but, he was just used to Meg interacting with that environment. Meg opening the fridge, Meg stepping out of the shower, Meg lifting the TV remote off the coffee table. Meg, who was dead. Buried. All her things in storage or given to the Salvation Army. Maybe he should move, but then those fragments of a life he had had would be gone for good.

“It’s not stupid,” said Bridget with an empathetic smile. “You feel that you would be replacing her, disconnecting yourself from an important part of your life. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to remember, Will. That said, if memories of the past are preventing you from pursuing a future, maybe it is time to make a decision. No one can replace your wife and it’s nobody’s duty, either, but you can make this easier on yourself. You can start small, maybe get a few new pieces of furniture. Like a bed, for example. You will still remember Meg exactly as she was _and_ there will be room enough for someone else, too.”

For a few moments Will said nothing, giving Bridget’s thoughts an opportunity to drift away again. “Are you okay?” he finally said, concern seeping through the cracks in his voice.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“You’re hungover.” He leaned forward in his seat in response to Bridget’s defensive look. “I’ve seen that face way too many times in the mirror since Meg not to recognize it, no matter how good an actress you are. That and the fact that this is the second time in five minutes you’ve said that thing about nobody being able to replace my wife. Although the first time I believe your exact words were ‘nobody can be expected to take on that burden’.”

Bridget’s eyebrows furrowed as her cheerful façade shook slightly in its foundations. “Shit, sorry. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

“No, you’re right and I agree. But it’s a tell. What’s gotten you reaching for the bottle?”

Bridget put on her best work smile. “I appreciate the concern, but we’re not here to talk about me.”

Will scoffed. “Do me a favor? Don’t patient-zone me, Westfall.”

Bridget’s back stiffened. Her eyes quickly darted to the closed, plain white hardwood door of her office. Locked. The blinds were shut here, too, for maximum confidentiality. She always found herself isolated somehow. One of the perks of the job, she supposed. “Pardon me?”

“Well, I might not be an interpersonal relationship guru or anything, but I know how you take your coffee, I know you like crosswords, and I know you still drive stick in the year of our Lord 2015. Sure, most of the time it’s been you listening to me blabber on but I’d say these are the kind of things that would push us a _tad_ closer to ‘friends’.”

Bridget exhaled quietly. “Oh.”

“I may not have a license to sort people’s shit out but I do have pretty broad shoulders. Not half-bad for a cry every once in a while, I’m told.”

She smiled despite the increasing pressure in her forehead that threatened to overwhelm her and prove the man right. “Maybe another time,” she said, her gaze fixed on the plastic cup she was holding on her lap.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, I’m happy to mind my own business. But go home. Get some rest. If I can see it, that means Ferguson can too. She already hates having you around doing all that _caring_ and being _proactive_. You really don’t want to be putting fuel on that fire.” He rose as if to leave but then he took a step closer, leaned over and gently patted her shoulder. He didn’t catch the way she winced ever so slightly. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with, uh, Franky Doyle’s release yesterday, would it?”

Her eyes met his as she mentally surrounded her unshed tears with three brick walls and a moat. “No. Doyle’s got nothing to do with this.”

Will retreated a few steps, barely concealing a frown. “Right. Didn’t think so.” Then, as if just now remembering it for the first time, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small plastic rectangle with a sheet of paper embedded in it. “Doreen gave me this earlier. Said the women found it in the mess. You hold onto it now,” he said and laid the nametag down flat on Bridget’s desk before turning away – for his sake or hers, he wasn’t sure – and walking out.

It was one thing to lose the nametag. It had happened to him a couple times. It was another thing to either not notice or consciously decide to not tell anyone and ask for a new one. It was the kind of mistake that could land one in unfortunate situations, especially under Governor Ferguson. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. Then again it could have just been a coincidence. It could have been mere circumstance that brought Doreen to him as he was on his way to Bridget’s office saying: “Hey Mr. Jackson? The girls found this on the floor in the mess. It’s Miss Westfall’s. I thought you could maybe give it back to her when you see her? I’d go myself but I have to get to my work unit. Cheers!”

And then there was the way Bridget spoke… _Doyle_. Before today, it had always been _Franky_.

Christ, this fucking place. Anyone who stayed here long enough would start seeing ghosts behind every corner eventually. All the plotting and the turf wars, it was enough to blame it all on Wentworth. Not to mention the killings, he thought and grit his teeth. Still, the facts were there: the day before, Bridget Westfall had talked to Franky Doyle alone in the mess hall. In the morning, her nametag was found in the same place, and the woman was a bubble ready to burst. He should have kept his mouth shut. He passed by H1, where Liz was currently watching the latest episode of _Code Black_ on the lounge television. Franky Doyle was also there, pouring hot water into a cup in a steady stream from the kettle. Despite the fact that she was watching the water rise intently she cursed as it overflowed and spilled onto the counter and from there on the floor. She leapt away and sidestepped around the mess in an attempt to cool her scalded toes. That was when she turned to find Will Jackson standing on the other side of the lounge, ten cells between them, watching her with a hawk-like gaze.

No more favors for Franky Doyle. He walked away without a word, wondering what kind of bed he should buy and if it would be better to grab some new sheets while he was at it.

The entrance to Joan Ferguson’s lair closed behind Bridget’s back. It was only a matter of time until this conversation happened. Such a glaring mistake – a crack in her meticulousness – stood no chance of going unnoticed. In smaller, less convoluted games, perhaps, but not when playing with a strategist like Joan, one who always had no more and no less than four pens that looked exactly the same lined up in a perfect rectangle on her desk without a speck of dust or as much as a scratch on the wood in sight. Joan stood at the window facing the outside with her hands clasped behind her back. The office was submerged in silence, yet the silence sounded like Joan. Like she had taken over the entire black-and-white space from wall to wall, sucking the colors out of it in the process. Or maybe Joan sounded like silence and the room simply accommodated her the way silence spreads until it’s interrupted.

“You weren’t wearing your nametag this morning,” she said as she turned to face the newcomer. “Why was I not notified you’ve misplaced it?”

“I didn’t think something like that would be worth wasting your time on, Governor,” Bridget replied with a stiff smile, keeping her distance. She was not invited to take a seat. No, this was a standing type of conversation.

“Rest assured it is very well worth my time, Miss Westfall. There’s talk of you on the compound already. Surely you understand that rumors of inappropriate conduct involving a staff member have negative consequences for all the officers.” Check. Joan’s eyes followed Bridget’s features without blinking. It was only logical that this would be the best place to strike. The unfortunate downside of asking too many questions is that one might accidentally give away too many answers. What they care about, what they’re looking for. What they fear. As luck would have it, Bridget was about to answer all of that.

Her eyebrows made a run for her hairline. “Inappropriate conduct? I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

Oh, but she did. It was painfully obvious, really, what with the way she had been keeping away from the crowd all day, away from the noise and the reminders. The way she changed everything overnight – all her clothes, even the leather jacket replaced with a lighter model, her hair loose and rolling off her shoulders the morning after. It was clear from how, for perhaps the first time since she was hired, she wasn’t asking any questions. Now all that remained was to discover just what type of drunk Bridget Westfall was – the celebrant or the mourner. “You know how quickly these women latch onto any tidbit of information in search of an exciting story. For example information regarding your and Franky Doyle’s encounter yesterday evening.” There was still that distinction to be made. Are you afraid, or are you _terrified_?

“With all due respect, I don’t think it’s wise to jump to conclusions in here. I like to believe we are above paying attention to gossip.”

“Well, it becomes a bit harder to ignore when your personal items start turning up on prison grounds,” Joan remarked, pursing her lips with a dash of impatience. (Interesting how we call labels personal items now.) “We will need to issue a new one as quickly as possible.”

Bridget paused briefly, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the nametag Will had left on her desk not long ago. She did not look down at it. “There’s no need. It’s been returned.”

“I see,” Joan replied, taking a step closer to the other woman. The corner of her mouth twitched imperceptibly. There was the proof she was looking for, like a rook cornering a single lone pawn. The fact that her opponent waited until that moment to present her evidence – it told her everything she needed to know. “Then dare I humbly suggest it would be in your best interest to actually _wear_ it.” A step forward. Bridget had no legal moves left. “We wouldn’t want anyone forgetting where you belong, now would we?”

Where or to whom, Bridget mused.

She refused to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. It was enough just to be so painfully conscious of the blood coursing through her veins and every millimeter that her body moved back and forth with the flow several times per second. Some of her physical reactions she couldn’t control. Others, on the other hand, she could use to her advantage. She could have been an actress instead, far away from Wentworth and its directors. Could have been. Should have been. Didn’t matter now. She smiled sweetly – the sweetness of a strawberry dipped in cyanide – and didn’t break eye contact for one second as she pinned the nametag on her breast with a steady hand. “I understand. Will that be all?”

Eager to get out of there. And take the damned thing right off, judging by the way her hand jerked away from the offensive little reminder as soon as it was fastened securely. Joan reciprocated the smile and took a moment – significantly longer than it needed to be – to read over the text. For all her faults, Bridget was an observant woman. She would understand that as long as Joan was there to conduct the play there would be no getting rid of that. “Yes, I believe so.” She stepped back towards her throne on the other side of the desk and waited until Bridget’s hand was at the door to deliver the final blow. “Oh and Miss Westfall, a word of advice?”

Bridget took care not to stop too abruptly. She turned around to see the governor sitting at her desk reigning the way she had before Bridget and would after her, one of her exquisitely arranged, pricey pens already in her hand. “Yes, Governor?”

“Don’t let the prisoners get under your skin. Even if you think you’re being careful, silence alone can reveal a weakness. And weaknesses matter far too much in a place like this,” Joan said, signing the topmost form from a stack of papers.

Bridget’s fingers clenched around the door handle for a split second before she reminded herself who she was and loosened her grip. “I will keep that in mind.”

She was not about to go home with a headache that day, wherever home was for her. She wasn’t about to escape to a place where she would be accepted. It occurred to her, the thought of getting in her car and staring at the contact labeled _Will Jackson_ on her phone screen for minutes before inevitably shutting the device off and letting herself go limp in the driver’s seat. Rubbing her eyes until she could see their crimson outline in the rear-view mirror. The thought of having the rest of the day to break – oh, it occurred to her, called out to her, even. She could go be twenty three again for a night, at a lesbian bar downtown picking up a clueless pillow princess who wouldn’t dare touch her while Bridget got everything she needed.

But she wasn’t twenty three anymore. She was twice the age she had been the last time she told herself someone else, someone more responsible, should have loved her enough to care. She was alone.

So she would go to H3 for answers instead. There was still one person left falling through this downward spiral of meaningless interweaving noise. There was still one person who could explain to her what she was looking for, if they could only find a common language.

Julia.


	15. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one. Life is slowly but surely beginning to happen again, but I've still got plenty of fight in me. And so do the ladies! And as always, much love to every single reader (yes, you too). Writing this fic has been an incredible ride so far, and will be for a lot longer.

> “Amethyst and flowers on the table  
>  Is it real or a fable?  
>  Well I suppose a friend is a friend  
>  And we all know how this will end”

– Death With Dignity (Sufjan Stevens)

* * *

 

Being inconspicuous in the microcosm of Wentworth proved to be a herculean task. Bridget hadn’t even figured out where specifically she would look – after all, her target wasn’t exactly known for her predictability from what she gathered – before the looks caught up to her in the corridors. Raised eyebrows, some sneers, and Lucy Gambaro asking whether Bridget would be free tonight without a smidge of shame, to which Bridget replied with an icy smile: “Oh, have you changed your mind about addressing those insecurity issues of yours? Because in that case I can arrange for Dr. Lynch to see you on Thursday.” To which Lucy turned her burly face to an even burlier companion and muttered the words _stuck-up bitch_ loud enough for the whole phone queue to hear as she sulked away.

Bridget could imagine exactly how this prison game of telephone went. Hey, what’s Miss Westfall’s nametag doing here? I dunno, you reckon she dropped it? In here? When has she ever been here? Oh, you know who was on cleaning duty last night? Franky. No way! Ladies, check this out! Franky snatched a nametag off Miss Westfall. You sure she didn’t _snatch_ her snatch? Who snatched whose snatch? Damn, she sure is _climbing_ up the ranks! What’s all this snatch talk? Miss Westfall has the hots for Franky Doyle. Nah, they’ve probably been at it for ages. I mean have you _seen_ Franky lately? The girl can barely walk straight! Ha! Explains why the damn place is still a mess. Ooooohh!

Something along those lines, most likely. What started as a plea for a ceasefire got distorted into something much simpler and more appealing to half-attentive, disillusioned ears. And Bridget almost wished they’d been right.

Shaking the thought off she turned the corner to the H3 lounge. There she saw ten mostly open cells, two of them closed, their inhabitants either napping or enjoying the few hours of sunlight they could get outside. Then there were the outliers, the people in between: herself and none other than the petite, hazel-eyed answer to what Bridget hoped were all her questions. Julia was sitting alone at the table arranging dominos into a flat spiral. She appeared to be deep in thought, rocking back and forth in the chair. There were many rules to consider. The right side of the previous block and the left side of the new one had to add up to an odd number and each set of 7 blocks starting from the outer end of the spiral had to be divisible by 5. Except in cases where they had to contain at least six prime numbers and look like a rattlesnake because someone had told the time. Several leaf blades were sticking out of the girl’s dark, curly hair, or perhaps growing out of it rather. She was a dryad that day, you see.

“Hi,” Bridget approached carefully so as not to spook the girl who would not tear her gaze from the blocks. “Julia, right? What are you up to?”

“Battle plans,” Julia responded without looking up in a tone that suggested this was the most obvious answer in the world as she measured the distance between two dominoes with her thumb and index finger, then carefully adjusted the position of a six-over-four. “Not much time left now.”

“Mind if I join you for a minute?”

At that the younger woman turned her attention to the newcomer, squinting at this distant image from a past she had to reach for inside her mind. Yes, one of the wisps, Julia recognized her. One of the few that illuminated the depths of the woods. “Bridget?”

“That’s me, yes. We’ve spoken before, do you remember?”

Beings of flesh among trees. There were too many trees around them, listening even when asleep, hearing even if deaf. It wasn’t necessarily their will. It was just that trees, in all their majesty and primordial power, invited shadows in. They provided crowns and canopies for darkness to gather under in thick, sticky clumps. In the middle of all that, Julia recalled seeing a naked lady in a field of green, and a wisp that didn’t know enough, in one of those rare spots of light. “Follow?” Julia said in a rising intonation indicating a cautious suggestion. She rose from the chair and covered her battle plans with a newspaper from a week prior.

Bridget frowned. “You want me to come with you? Why, what’s the matter?”

“Follow.”

It was no longer a question. Before Bridget had a chance to respond the girl had wandered off right past those imposing metal gates and outside of the unit. She left no room for improvisation in that one word. Well, it wasn’t like Bridget could have opposed her, perhaps only to drink and make shit decisions and compose herself and come back later to yet another _follow_. Her options ranged from nothing to a faraway spark glimmering on the horizon. So she took a deep breath and set out after it, as she had done so many times in the past, as she always would.

She followed Julia through a series of crooked hallways past every vast world the girl had conjured in her imagination – there was the smoking caterpillar from Wonderland, the three-headed hydra who awaited mortal combat with Hercules, and that staircase over there, that led up to Rapunzel’s tower. Through swamp and desert sands they fought their way against the wind. The girl had always had an affinity for stories, one that bubbled up to the surface all too often even back when she could see the world through the same lens as most, and for good reason: they lent themselves easily to hope. One time when the class was on a school trip, 9-year-old Julia could have sworn that the lady appreciating the sculpture of a snow leopard in a museum was her older sister who had gone missing years earlier. But when she snuck away from the group to talk to her, the woman gave her a different name. So one story ended, cut too short, but it didn’t matter because another would begin. Still, she could hear the teacher’s disapproval and vividly picture her eyes rolling up even though her back was turned to the speaker: “It’s nothing, Julia’s just _convinced_ of something again.”

Had Bridget known this, perhaps their destination wouldn’t have come as a surprise to her. All she knew were tales told by the letters in Julia’s file – that she was an Aussie in her mid-twenties who had spent most of her adult life incarcerated on charges of attempted murder from when she was eighteen, and that she had still been fully lucid then. She pled guilty. People on the outside would have thought it was hard to imagine someone so… absent, someone so small at heart to be capable of taking a human life – or trying to. Bridget had spent far too much time around those we call murderers to cling to any such delusions. In the vast majority of cases it wasn’t a crook lurking in the bushes or an overly friendly old man burying human bones in his backyard. As was forgotten all too often, most crimes were committed by people. Most murderers fell under one of two categories, only one of which typically ended up in women’s prisons: entitlement and desperation. It was women with bruises on their thighs. It was the penniless and disenfranchised trying to defy their own fate. It was abused teenagers with one person standing between them and a tantalizing mirage of freedom. Under the wrong circumstances, it was anyone. Survival over desire. As far as experience taught her Bridget didn’t, in general, fear imprisoned murderers. She feared the victims she would never get to meet.

For this reason she didn’t think twice about blindly following this girl, who never turned around to check on her and just kept walking. Just as she was beginning to suspect that Julia had forgotten all about their exchange and wandered off into another land, the girl turned the corner in between familiar shelves of the library – _Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, Franky?_ – and then farther down that road, past the sections on law and chemistry and biology and history (Australian, Chinese, New Zealand, British, the world at wars) and through an entranceway into a side room of _fiction_. From there the two moved past drama, romance, and sci-fi before arriving at their destination, or so Bridget guessed from the way Julia came to a halt in front of one particular bookshelf in the corner and turned to her as if she knew exactly where Bridget was at any point in time regardless of whether or not she actually saw her. “Wait.”

There was a small red table accompanied by an even smaller chair hugging the wall by the bookshelf, an unopened pack of crayons and some paper lying on top of it buried under a thin layer of dust. Julia paid no attention to those and instead bent over to lift the edge of the bookshelf by a bar and carry it, millimeter by millimeter, far enough from the wall to leave a human-ish-sized gap. Bridget’s eyes scanned the books involved in the scene. Calvin and Hobbes. Greek myths. Donald Duck. Grimms’ Fairy Tales. She was beginning to understand at least part of the reason why this would be the place Julia chose. There were no children in the prison – not until Doreen gives birth, at least.

Julia’s face flushed red as she huffed, pushing the wooden obstacle out of the way with her whole upper body. Bridget was too preoccupied trying to put the pieces together to help before she noticed the door frame peeking out from behind the solid back plate protecting the books. Having determined that she had done enough, Julia exhaled in order to minimize the width of her body and slipped into the gap.

The door opened inwards, revealing a tiny, barren space with nothing but a light switch. Well, a light switch and countless pictures lining up the walls, stuck to their surface with bubble gum. The pictures depicted vastly different scenes all around – there was one of a knight on the back of a rearing horse, one of a flaming phoenix in the night sky, one of the Grim Reaper standing by an occupied hospital bed, all doodled in markers with the steady hand and artistic subtlety of a preschooler. Truth be told, the room used to be a closet for cleaning supplies in days before the library existed. Back then this was still “the ping-pong corner” and enjoyed a lot of attention before an inmate got into a quarrel here that resulted in half a broom shaft sticking out of her ribcage and a hole in the wall marking the spot where she was impaled. Julia remembered. She remembered how her hands shook as she held them over her mouth to prevent herself from making a sound, hidden under one of the tables. She had only been serving time for a few weeks then. She remembered how they pulled the shaft out and how there was so much blood the growing pool on the ground almost reached her sneakers. Even after they closed down the entire space for months under the guise of “reconstruction”, she remembered. When it opened again, now as a library with different doors, different furniture, a different purpose, and different colors all around, despite their best efforts she still remembered.

They didn’t wall it up. It was just an insignificant little room. But they hid it, hid it where no one would look and if they did they would find nothing but an empty fragment of a past no one needed or wanted to be reminded of anymore. No one would come there to read stories about monsters and princesses.

Bridget pinched the bridge of her nose and with a quiet sigh she squeezed inside too. By then Julia was already sitting cross‑legged on the floor pouring imaginary tea into an imaginary cup for a not‑so‑imaginary friend. There was just enough room for the two of them to coexist without invading each other’s personal space, plus a bit of leeway for a saucer.

“You hide in here?” Bridget asked taking in the drawings revealed by blue-tinted light.

“This one doesn’t hide. No one else bothers to look,” the girl retorted and patted the empty space in front of her beckoning Bridget to sit down. “Small and broken, but it is home. The only place with no shadows. This one has taken care to protect it with light magic. They can’t hear us in here.”

“Why is it important that they don’t hear us?” Bridget asked quietly and accepted the invitation, tucking her legs under her.

“During the day they can’t be seen. They hide on walls and in corners and where fingers touch the table and they’re always close, but at night they are free to roam. They don’t mean well. They never mean well. Not for you.”

Bridget looked up to the ceiling where a single rectangular light cast said magic over them. Because of its position the two women’s shadows fell directly underneath them. It occurred to her that Julia was likely most comfortable around noon. “Do they scare you? The shadows?”

For the first time in their encounter, Julia’s face broke into a knowing smile. “This one doesn’t have anything they can take away.” Then the smile turned sad, her wayward eyes laden with some sort of understanding but of what, that much was a mystery to the other woman. Julia raised her arm and reached over to pat the top of Bridget’s head rather clumsily. “Bridget does.”

A different scene flashed through Bridget’s mind. Two children building a castle in a sandpit. She had seen them once as she walked past a playground on her way to class, a boy and a girl from the looks of it. The boy accidentally used too much force piling up the sand and smashed one of the towers. He started crying, and the girl patted the top of his head. The crying stopped in that instant, the collapsed tower long forgotten. There was comfort in the touch, as simple and unrestrained as comfort can be.

Bridget took a deep breath. “The other day you said you saw a naked lady in a field of green. Did you mean Franky Doyle? Was she the one you were talking about?”

“This one never asked for her name,” Julia shrugged. While she spoke she was looking around at the four drawing‑covered walls looking for the right place for her next piece. Maybe even the ceiling could do. She could paint on the sky, raise new stars so that the moon wouldn’t have to work all alone. “This one only knows Bridget’s name.”

“This lady—was that the first time you saw her?”

“No. She lives in a kingdom not far from here, over the mountains and the lakes. She likes to play outside.”

Bridget could only hope she was on the right track. A kingdom not far from here. If a child were telling this story, what would it mean? Not far from here would be somewhere Julia could go and play, as opposed to all the realms outside of the prison and her reach. Somewhere in H-block. “Did she ever—did she ever _rule_ that kingdom?” she asked softly, watching the girl’s movements for any hint of meaning.

Julia’s eyes suddenly locked with hers with a sense of gravity that clashed unnaturally with the rest of her. “Yes. All of them, some time. But they set fire to her palace and the flames burnt it down, this one heard. Red and green, they don’t mix well. They’re better off side by side, like on Christmas, see?” She tapped her index finger on one of the pictures hanging close enough to the floor for the edge of the paper to be touching it. This one showed a Christmas tree with colorful bulbs on its branches and a potted flower with bright red leaves growing over green ones. It was a poinsettia plant set on a table with wrapped presents under it.

Franky’s reign as top dog ended with her fight with Bea Smith, the crimson-haired menace of H‑block, shortly before Bridget arrived in Wentworth. She had studied their history, suspected Franky was envious of Bea’s leadership position at first. Bea had humiliated her. She was the first to force Franky into submission, a fact the brunette was too proud to admit to herself. In their sessions, Franky had only ever referred to the other inmate by one name.

_Red._

So it was Franky, the lady in the field. Or at least it was part of her – the visible, public part. That was what Bridget was asked to find before losing herself along the way. At least she wasn’t making this convoluted shit up.

Julia tilted her head to the side at Bridget’s silence. A quiet wisp, those are rare. Rare and dying. “You didn’t find her.” The words came slowly, as if uttering them would speak the truth into existence.

Bridget spoke many languages. She could speak the language of revenge, of love, of depression and grief, of loss, of acceptance, of life and death. But she didn’t have children, didn’t work with children. She never had, and was never taught the language of simplicity, of truth without rules and restrictions. Her vocabulary consisted of words ranging from _relapse_ to _schizophrenia_ but contained no way to express—well, to express—no way to put that. “She did something bad,” she heard herself say in the end, her voice a bit less firm than usual but her gaze unwavering.

Julia didn’t understand. “Didn’t all of us?”

Bridget chuckled.

“Does that make us bad?”

The age‑old question whose answer changes with the weather, the circumstance, the listener, the religion… But people who speak the language of simplicity don’t care much for context. There is just a question, an answer, and a yellow brick road between them. A cruel, cold, uncompromising flame in her heart wanted to say yes. She wanted to say yes so much her insides burned with the bitterness of it.

_Tell me this isn’t you._

“Not necessarily,” she said. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

_I don’t know._

“It’s the shadows. They hurt her. They make her do things. They make her say things. They come for her at night and take her away. When they bring her back, there is red everywhere, and it’s not her anymore.”

“You saw this happen? When you were—”

“The last time this one fell down the rabbit hole, yes,” Julia interrupted.

On some level, somewhere deep down, the girl must have known. She must have known she was a prisoner locked in a place where constant warfare turned sisters into enemies. That was why she wouldn’t call things by their proper names—or let others do so. Perhaps reality was simply one of the myriad of stories mingling with one another at the precipice of her imagination from where she would pick apart and rearrange them as she pleased. A blissful way to live, that. If Bridget had the freedom to choose what patches in the fabric of existence she respected… But she didn’t. She had chosen to watch tragedies unfold in herself and everyone around her, and found herself stupidly envious.

“You can’t catch the night if you never stray from the candle,” the girl remarked, tracing idle patterns on the floor. Although they probably had some sort of intricate meaning to them, too, like maps or secret code. Then she lifted her head up and reached for an imaginary teapot upon observing the empty space at Bridget’s feet. “More tea?” she asked, motioning towards the imaginary porcelain Bridget hadn’t touched.

A smile crept up the blonde’s face and she pretended to pick up a teacup and held it in the air for Julia to fill up. “I’d like that, thank you.”

Bridget spent far too much time under the candlelight, and for good reason. It was safe, it was proper, and it was expected. Franky, on the other hand, was being pulled ever closer to the darkness by a chain that was often more literal than metaphorical. It was a chain that favored her wrists on good nights and her neck on bad ones. Still, it never bound her too tightly, lest tell‑tale marks would appear on her skin the next day for uninvited glances to spot. No, this damage was invisible. It only choked for a second, only brought tears to her eyes for a minute. She actually preferred the leash to everything else that tended to follow.

“Did it feel good? To do what you did?”

It was the voice she could not stand. It burrowed its way inside her mind no matter how hard she pushed it away, no matter how much she focused on thoughts of her books or the pain in her arm or literally anything fucking else, no matter how hard she bit the inside of her cheek until it bled just to feel something different.

“To her?”

At some point, she stopped being sure whether it was Joan Ferguson whispering behind her or another layer to the ringing sound in her ears. She could see the woman in front of her admiring her creation – and hear her at the same time, feel her breath brush against her hair. _Created_ , that’s what she was. She was being sculpted, a true work of art. The knife in her thighs was always cutting away the undesirable edges of her, even when her skin was already bumpy and covered with scabs and straight‑lined scars all over. On nights like this, the blood barely had a chance to clot before she was torn open again.

Her head snapped to the side as a leather glove struck her cheek. “Answer me when I speak to you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Franky sobbed quietly. “I didn’t do anything you didn’t let me do, I promise.”

Franky Doyle. Even her own name sounded unfamiliar by now. She had fallen so far down. Was that even her name, or was it just another lie? Few words carried any depth anymore. She wouldn’t recognize herself if she saw the trembling shell she had become with streaks of crimson trickling down her legs and pooling in wet blotches at her feet. The sensation of the blood tickling her skin on the way down provided another avenue for her to cling to as she struggled to remain standing. Not that it mattered more than as feeble support of her own ego – whenever she fell, the chain was right there to hold her up. She wasn’t allowed to fall where she wanted to. Couldn’t sink into the ground and disappear. No, she was forced to stay and watch what she would become.

“Did she scream?”

Franky Doyle. The girl from that reality show. Used to be top dog back in her day. It felt like a lifetime ago. How could she have ever been capable of anything even remotely important or influential or _not horrible?_ She never was, that was the answer. She broke everything she came into contact with. Every person shattered under her touch. Every friend, gone. Everyone who cared—shunned. Despised by the very same people who brought her into the world to the point where they cursed her name. Never to accomplish anything, never to be of any good to anyone but Joan.

Franky knew Joan didn’t like it when she cried. She was too loud, took up too much space. Maybe Joan wouldn’t notice if she just— _Franky, stop it!_ —if she just— _I’m so sorry_ —let the tears paint lines on her cheeks without as much as an unnecessary breath. The words fighting for a chance at life at the back of her mind— _shut up_ —were dead on arrival. She—she was supposed to answer. She was supposed to say something, just be a good girl for once in her pointless life and say something. “She—she couldn’t,” she whispered inaudibly.

Then Joan’s hand was on her temple, tucking a lock of sweaty hair behind her ear. It was so soft, so gentle, no glove or barrier between them. “You poor little thing,” came a voice from behind her that spoke over her labored breaths. “You love her, don’t you?” Joan’s thumb lightly brushed the tears off her face and Franky leaned into the touch, eager for every speck of affection she didn’t deserve. “You hurt her because you love her. Because deep within that stubborn heart of yours—you care.”

In the weeks prior Franky would have said something. _Don’t talk about her_ , maybe. _Leave her out of this. Shut your fucking trap_ would have been a favorite, undoubtedly. But there was no point, no point in standing up to the inevitable and the undeniable, and Joan’s hand felt so warm against the corner of her eye.

“We are the same.”

Franky’s eyes snapped open and her breath got caught in her throat. “I’m nothing like you,” she objected with more conviction than would have been wise for her.

The chuckle that followed sent a shiver from the back of her neck all the way down her spine. “Of course you are. Can’t you see? We both have the predatory instinct.”

Predator. The label left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth and she felt a sudden urge to spit it out. Not because it offended her but because it pierced through her and right into the core of her truth—that she had treated the woman who dared come close enough like meat to be ripped off motionless bones.

“I need you to understand, Francesca, the same way I understand you. I only hurt you because I want you to be stronger. I only do these things to you because I care about you in a way nobody else does.”

She didn’t need to linger on that word because Joan’s tongue on her mouth sucked it right out. And Franky could have been half‑dead—she could have gone mad—she could have sealed a deal with Lucifer himself, but her eyes fluttered closed and she parted her lips and she let Joan poison her as much as she wanted. She clung to Joan Ferguson like she was the only remedy for the disease that she embodied. She imagined this was how Bridget felt—and she felt drunk with the karmic justice of it. To let herself succumb to a burning touch, that was what she deserved, and had her hands been free she would have pulled the woman closer until she melted into her. That was what Franky did, after all. She took. She took whatever she was offered with hungry eyes and greedy fingers until there was nothing, and no one, left.

She had never seen Joan look happier—or more pleased—than when her captor broke the kiss. “Can you do something for me?” Joan said, cupping Franky’s cheek gently. Joan, who had come to look a lot like home.

Franky saw black.

“Anything.”


	16. Novocain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: The majority of this chapter deals with the theme of suicide. (NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.) (As a sidenote, I think this one also has a record number of F-bombs. That's not particularly important or relevant to anything but, shit, I swear like a damn sailor.)

> “Damage done to the flesh, what they said in the name of the  
>  Damage done the heart is the start of the end  
>  Damage done to my soul, I know, it goes with my  
>  Damage done to my life, cursing loud at the chaos”

– One More Soul to the Call (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn)

* * *

 

When Vera Bennett returned home that night a certain tightness, a forceful pull suddenly disappeared from her shoulders as she dropped into a kitchen chair. It was probably the first time in a good while her muscles relaxed for longer than the blink of an eye. The tension had been increasing for days, if not weeks, despite lack of a single culpable reason. Vera had no specific knowledge of the events of the other day involving a certain psychologist and an inmate – none past her own belief that Bridget Westfall was treading on thin bloody ice. Neither did she know about the storm that was brewing over Wentworth or the god sending turbulent winds their way. The prisoners’ affairs were slipping under her radar. Not for lack of focus on her part, but rather due to the stifling air that had begun to settle inside the prison where people no longer talked to each other except to assert dominance or indulge in sexual jokes. Years ago she would have made a conscious effort to understand the women, but under Joan’s wing she had come to regard them as they really were: animals clinging onto any affordable distraction. Everything appeared to be the same on the surface, and yet Vera had a subconscious feeling that a shadow was stretching over them all as the sun advanced across the horizon. That something was broken in Wentworth.

Perhaps the cards in her mailbox had finally started getting to her. Take this one, for example – it said in letters printed in italics: “Happy birthday, Vera.” She had never seen anyone drop anything in her mailbox, nor did she ever see signs of anyone lurking around her house. No one had ever approached her. She couldn’t file a restraining order against a person who seemed to have no harmful intentions and who never showed up, who only proved their existence by leaving untraceable perfumed get-well-soon wishes and good-night messages for her to find. Whoever it was, they clearly hadn’t done their homework. Her birthday was tomorrow, not today.

On the other side of the city, Bridget was standing in her living room staring at the crosses dispersed across the wall in front of her. Despite the sheer number of them – wooden and porcelain, small and not so much, decorative and plain – she didn’t pray much. Like every other aspect of her life, religion was a choice she made. It would have been easy for her to blame misfortune or miracles on a distant figure that remained mute no matter how many times she used it as a target for outbursts of rage. Bridget could appreciate easy, but easy rarely made sense to her. Instead she preferred to think of God as an overseer – someone who simply observed the choices she made. Someone she could consult about them, almost like a friend. The whole meaning of life, divine will and punishment thing didn’t really work for her. She turned to God not to ask what the right thing to do was – she didn’t believe in any such nonsense – but to ask what decisions were uniquely hers to make. Not to wonder _what_ to do, but to wonder _if_.

God’s messengers kept repeating the same thing over and over. _Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum._ Forgiveness is yours to give, yours to keep, and yours to hold onto in times of strife. If you can give it, if you possess the ability to turn wine back into water, then go in peace. If you can’t give it – if it’s keeping you whole – then go in peace. It’s not about whether or not the recipient deserves to be forgiven. It’s about you and what you wish to do with the single unalienable, innate power you wield over any living thing. That is your choice, and your choice is who you are. No more, no less. Lives will change either way.

Her power. Her path. She didn’t feel powerful when she felt tears dripping down her trembling chin. “You’re asking too much of me,” she spoke softly to the crosses. “Lord, you’re asking too much.”

She settled into restless sleep, her thoughts running wild with possibilities, mistakes, and second chances. They guided her all the way to the brink of consciousness where they would wait for her to wake up tomorrow. Thankfully, her home was too far from Wentworth for Franky Doyle’s lullaby to keep her teetering on the edge.

“Dum-dum, dum-dum, it’s a wanderer’s road for me.”

It was a song Franky had listened to countless times as a child. It came from an animated movie adaptation of a children’s book she had never actually read. However, she always used to watch _Bonnie on the Run_ on a worn‑out VHS tape when her mother was out drinking with a man, knowing well that she wouldn’t be back until the wee hours. She knew this because she had waited for her mother to come back home for dinner one too many times. Fear of getting caught on nights like those gradually grew duller until it subsided almost completely, and on those nights little Franky would quietly sing along to Bonnie the beagle as she escaped her doghouse and explored the neighborhood.

“It stretches far, it stretches wide, my, what a lovely sight!”

She never understood why Bonnie ended up coming back to the house in the end. If Franky had found a way to clip her chain, she would have never looked back.

“Tell the moon I won’t be home. I’ll outrun ya all alone,” she sang softly over the ringing inside her head to the knot she had just tied. It was a laborious process, what with the fingers of her tattooed arm barely listening to her, but she came out with a victorious grin on her face. “And if they ask, it’s in my nature. Never in one place to stay.” It was a nice night, all things considered. _Ringadingading_. Clear skies, and even the stars were visible despite being blinded by the prison’s artificial lights towering in every corner. And she couldn’t not smile at the chipper, upbeat melody she hadn’t heard in over ten years, even as she recreated a more tame, slower, solemn version of it that was arranged around the base line of a constant, Morse code-like hum in the darkness of her cell. “Through hail and sand and snow and rain, little Bonnie’s on her way. Dum-dum, dum-dum, it’s a wanderer’s road for me.”

Guilt, fear, regret – all those emotions passed her by because Franky wouldn’t give them the time of day. She was tired of beating herself up. It was time to let something pleasant course through her again, as pleasant as a silly memory of adventures she had once taken part in by watching the story unfold. She drowned out all that meaningless clutter with her voice, just for one night, and for one night she was happy.

“It’s a wondrous road for me.”

She was happy as she – slowly, with pain shooting up her arm like a row of infected needles – tied one end of the curled‑up sheet around the door handle from the outside, threw the rope over the top of the door, got up on a stack of books, and slipped the noose around her neck. It was going to be over. There was going to be silence again, and Franky was happy.

Bea Smith had not been sleeping well. The dissonance between what Wentworth meant to her and what she meant to Wentworth had got her breaking into cold sweat during the nights, letters and memories from the outside playing out in her head reminding her of a world she created but was no longer part of. The life she did have felt like it was submerged in an oxygen-rich liquid that flooded the entire prison. People could walk and talk and breathe in it just fine, but still she saw the glint of sunlight on the drops and her brain kept firing warning signals making the rest of her body tense and heated with adrenaline because nature never intended for her to stay underwater, was actively fighting against it. You’re drowning. You’re all drowning, Bea.

Then again, she knew she would never breathe oxygen – real oxygen, the air that had carried the voice of her daughter to her – again. Torturous approximations were all she had left of anything real. And she would be damned if she let it slip through her fingers. But she could have used a boost, and the boost came in the form of a square‑shaped paper pack of chamomile tea in the dead of night. That was the idea, at least, but then Bea noticed the sheet tied around the handle of another cell.

Franky kicked the books from under her feet. She was waiting for the deadly pull that would keep her away from anything solid and then drag her farther and farther still, through the door, through the walls, through the ceiling and through all 28 years of her life. She was waiting for her fingers to claw at her throat in a desperate, last‑ditch attempt at salvaging the situation out of pure survival instinct. She was expecting to feel intolerable, excruciating pressure in her lungs as they tried to compensate for what the rational part of her body had done. She was expecting to thrash and struggle and count thousands of white‑hot knives marching through her ribcage in a chaotic parade of confusion – and then finally, to feel nothing at all.

She felt the tug holding her up against the forces of gravity and everything in the universe that had led up to that moment for all of two seconds before she crashed into the ground.

“Franky! Franky, for fuck’s sake!”

She landed on all fours (or threes, rather) and broke into a coughing fit on her knees, peppering the cold floor of her cell with bubbles of spit. There were arms reaching around her neck trying to take the noose off and Franky’s nostrils flared with anger. She had been happy. “Keep your fucking voice down!”

Born again, and those were her first words out of the womb. Fantastic.

The struggle against those arms that wouldn’t let up until they pulled the makeshift rope over her head was not one she had prepared for. She grunted and huffed as she tried to fight Bea off but her whole body was shaking, having fought its own inhabitant and lost and somehow won after all of that thanks to a loophole in the rules, all in a flash. Her heart had been racing for hours because it knew the same way Franky knew where this was going, perceiving the imminent danger that couldn’t be avoided, and the stress of running away from an inescapable enemy caused her muscles to accumulate tension that left her barely able to move when it subsided. So she curled her fingers weakly around Bea’s arm, barely disturbing its natural shape, and she breathed because she couldn’t force herself not to. Her mind had lost that game. The noose came off and her spine gave in and she unwillingly buried her head in the base of Bea’s neck all the while hissing: “Get out! You fucking bitch, _get out!_ ”

The worst punishment would have been Bea misunderstanding. She wasn’t staining Bea’s shirt with tears because she was relieved. As if she could even comprehend the meaning of the word. She was sobbing because in a matter of seconds she had lost everything she wanted – her freedom, her choice, her will. Franky was slapping Bea’s shoulders like a fish out of water and dripping snot on her chest for no other reason than because she was fucking _livid_.

And this woman just held her. She absorbed every hit, every insult, and every bit of resistance the same way she had when fifteen-year-old Debbie got her heart broken for the first time and blamed her mum for the sun setting in the evenings. She held Franky close and whispered to her even when the younger woman tried to cover her ears. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”

Franky mustered up the strength to push herself away and rise to her feet, although she had to focus specifically on keeping herself somewhat upright with her knees threatening to give in any second. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. The noose was still on the ground. “Go.”

Something between them had always prevented them from talking unless they were even. Bea followed her example and stood up, taking over her half of the playing field. “No, you sit down.”

“I’m not fuckin’ around, Red. Get out.”

Bea crossed the distance between them until Franky could make out exactly how evenly her crimson curls were trimmed. “Remember who you’re talking to now. I’m your top dog, and when I say you sit down, you sit the fuck down.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?”

The rhetorical question hung in the air like a curse. If in sixteen years Bea pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and fell into a deep slumber she would know who was responsible. Her features softened the slightest bit – for like all of them, she was more than one person. She was top dog, she was a friend, she was a murderer, she was a mother. Only one of those people was relevant in the prison, yet some women kept bringing out the other sides of her at the most inopportune moments.

The look she gave Franky then – the slow blink and barely perceptible lowering of her chin, the faintest beginning of a smile in the form of a single tic in her cheek – made the girl’s stomach turn. “Would you just get out of my face? It’s not enough you stole my ticket out of this shithole – you gotta do me in with some good old‑fashioned pity, do ya? Let me keep a _shred_ of dignity here!”

“It’s not pity, it’s called sympathy. You may have read about it in one of your books,” Bea deadpanned, motioning towards the scattered pile on the floor with her foot.

The thing about concepts is that they all have two meanings. The first is the one conventionally agreed upon. It’s the definitions in dictionaries, it’s the hand waving in greeting, good night kisses and good morning texts. It’s society coming together, taking an isolated set of attributes in its disembodied hand, looking at it through a thousand eyes and saying: this is it. But there is always the rejected contender, a contextually dependent alternative that only some accept only some of the time in only some places, for example in a jail cell in a correctional facility where someone wanted to end her pain. Said someone wasn’t faced with the concept of emotional accord with another’s mental state. _Sympathy_ was then a word in a language she didn’t speak, and maybe it did mean something else in Red’s world but not in the conversation Franky was having, to which other interpretations meant jack shit. To her it meant failure, plain and simple. “Yeah, well, you’re barking up a whole row of wrong trees here.”

“You’re getting out soon. You’re getting your life back. This shit’s pointless.”

What Franky just _adored_ were people who took one look at her and knew better than her. People like Bea Smith who had gotten to be the voice of reason in another’s life for so long they thought they could apply the same logic to everyone around them.

“You’re a strong girl. I’m not gonna watch you go down like this. Whatever it is, you put that thick head of yours to good use and fight it like you fight everything else.”

“Easy for you to say. Your demons are all in the ground.”

“Because I fucking put them there.”

People like Bea Smith who have suffered and come out on top and thought they’d found the cure for misery even though they didn’t have the faintest idea what she had done. What she had to look forward to. What she would have to answer for in hell if someone didn’t stop her. She clenched her fist and bared her teeth. “Just stop. Stop treating me like I’m your bloody kid. You lost your daughter because she was too stupid to know the line between life and death, real shame, so now you’re looking for someone to save because you were too late for her. She’s fucking dead, Bea. By now she’s all bones and dirt and pretty curly hair with worms crawling out of it. You buried her along with those demons, so accept my most half-arsed apologies if I don’t exactly look up to you as a paragon of strength.”

There was a moment – one that stretched out, slipped out of the boundaries of time and devoured the physical space around them, becoming a dreamscape of its own – where Franky was certain Bea was going to strike her. One where she could see through the strings of possible futures and witness herself crashing into the wall, then touching her forehead and feeling something warm and sticky on her fingers. It was the same moment where Bea could see herself pounce, tackling the girl to the ground and beating her senseless until she could see specks of white bone on her knuckles.

And then the moment passed, retreating back into the future it came from because it wasn’t meant to be this one. It observed the two actors, sniffed around for a place to roost and came to a definitive conclusion: no, not here.

“You think making everyone hate you will make this easier, huh? Better yet, we could finish you ourselves. That way it will all be justified. Was that what the whole fallout with Boomer was all about?”

“Quit telling me what I fuckin’—”

“Oh no, honey, I do know. Remember? I thought the exact same thing for a while there.”

That’s right, for a while. That was, let’s see, over a year prior, shortly after the death of her daughter. Before either of them rose to the top and fell back down hard. Bea had used the exact same tactic. Same rope, same goodbye (that is, no goodbye). Franky had held her up while the other girls untied the knot. She hovered over her and kept talking through it all. Stay with us, Red. You’re alright. And Bea had thought – just for a while, but she did – she should have broken their fucking hearts one by one.

“Do you really think you can just slip away like that? You hurt people you care about and give them no chance to ask for an explanation. They’re left wondering who you were forever and you’ll have lived for 28 years with nothing to show for it. How easy do you think that is?”

Hurting people she cared about, oh, Franky was good at that. She stared at the ceiling trying to hold back the tears that welled up in her eyes as flashes of memory reminded her just how much she excelled in the art. Bridget’s stone cold gaze cutting her in half. Her chest rising and falling at a rapid pace beneath Franky’s arm. The metallic sheen of tables and chairs. “You really should have walked away,” Franky choked, her voice breaking mid-sentence. She looked out the window and towards the night sky, arms crossed over her chest. She would have rather ripped her eyes out of her skull than see Bea Smith watch her cry.

It was quite unprecedented, this display in front of her, Bea thought. Franky hadn’t shed tears when her hand was in the steam press or even when her father came to visit. Bea hadn’t known who the visitor was then, but she found out that day that Franky’s equivalent of vulnerability was _talk to me again and I’ll break your jaw_. She almost sighed but managed to catch the rogue exhalation in her throat before it dug deeper into Franky’s wounds. “Maybe. But I made a choice and I’m committing to it, alright? So do us both a favor and go to bed,” she said, pointing a stern finger at the object in question.

Franky laughed the way an impressionist poet would at a surrealist painting, with derision and thinly veiled disdain. “What are you, on suicide watch now?”

“Apparently.”

Ah, well. Anything to make this nightmare end. Besides, that glimmer of happiness on the horizon was snuffed out the second her feet touched the floor again. It was nice to admire from a distance while it lasted. Fuck this shit. Without a word Franky dropped down on the mattress and turned to face the wall while Bea found her place sitting down in the corner leaning her back against a cupboard, having confiscated the noose for good, watching, guarding, ready to lunge at any opportunity.

“Red?” Franky whispered to the tiles. Minutes could have passed. Hours, maybe. Seconds. Time mattered little when you got a taste of existing outside of it. If all went well, Bea wouldn’t hear. Or know the real Franky Doyle.

 _If_ being the key word here.

“Hmm?” Bea hummed in response.

“Sorry,” Franky mumbled.

“You’ll make it up to me tomorrow. I’m going to need you on my side, so get some rest.”

Franky drew a simple picture on the wall with her fingertips: a half‑circle for a mound and a cross on top of it. “Right. Tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who's reading this. This one was supposed to be a lot longer but given how many words it took just to get through this bit of plot, and given the nature of it, I decided to keep it separate from what's going to go down "tomorrow". I will say however that it will be a big day. Hope you're enjoying the ride!
> 
> And if you find yourself in a similar situation as depicted above, try to take a while to think about it. There are people who care, there are people who love you, and while I believe your life is yours to do with as you please, suicide is hardly ever actually worth it, all things considered. I mean, you'll never have pizza again. And that's... that's rough, man.
> 
> Love,  
> xS


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